Smelling Moms’ Scent May Help Infants Bond With Strangers

The filer is public and can be found on the Amazonaws.com website.

Babies exposed to their mother's scent were more relaxed, smiled and made eye contact. Tara Moore is pictured.

Babies don't make it easy on mothers. If their mother tries to leave the room, they cry, whine and hold on for dear life. A worn piece of clothing is an easy solution to loosen the bond between mother and infant.

According to research published today in Science Advances, chemical signals in a mother's scent may help infants bond with strangers even when the mom is absent.

Babies were exposed to their mother's body odor via a worn t-shirt while interacting with a stranger. The infants with their mother's scent present were able to bond with the new adult more easily than the infants with a clean t-shirt. The study's co-author, Ruth Feldman, says that it's exciting that we can delegate parenting to those we live with. The results suggest that another adult can fulfill a similar role in a child's social and emotional development if they have the scent of the mother present.

Body odor helps us understand others. From an evolutionary perspective, what is the secret to Homo sapien's survival, thriving and conquest of the world? Our sense of smell, which was one of the first senses humans evolved, has been overlooked in the study of infant-parent communication compared to vision and hearing.

Logistically, social smells are less studied because they are hard to manipulate in a lab. Body odor is a cocktail of chemical signals. The reason smells are less studied is because humans are sampling the smell of our surroundings all the time, according to Eva Mishor, a neuroscientist at Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. It's 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 is 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 888-353-1299 Sense of smell is a very important part of this and if we look at the main decisions that we make in life, who should we mate with?

There are rodents that have odors that are critical for an offspring's ability to recognize and bond with its mother, but few studies have examined the phenomenon in humans. The team was interested in how a mother's scent affected the behavior of her baby. The age window is important because a baby's "social brain" develops rapidly.

The brain-to-brain synchrony between an infant and an adult is impacted by the presence or absence of a mother's scent. Neural synchrony is a process in which brain activity of people we are interacting with correlate with brain activity of people we are not interacting with. A conversation or eye contact can get two individuals to fire their brain cells in the same area. The level of neural synchrony between a mom and baby has been linked to the child's emotional development.

Each mom in the study was given a cotton t-shirt to sleep in for two nights. The mothers kept their shirt in the freezer during the day. Each mom brought their baby and their t-shirt into the lab with them, and researchers put brain waves from the participants into a machine.

The first scenario was designed to give scientists a baseline understanding of the brain-to-brain synchrony of moms and their babies, without the t-shirts. The researchers found that neural synchrony was higher between the mom and infant during face-to-face interactions. They had the same set of infants, but this time introduced a female stranger who had a child of the same age. The team placed a clean or worn t-shirt on the highchair tray or near the baby's face to see if the nearby smell of mom changed the baby's behavior.

Babies presented with a clean t-shirt had lower brain-to-brain synchrony when interacting with a stranger than when they were with their mother. The babies showed the same degree of neural synchrony when they were exposed to the mom scent t-shirt. The brain-to-brain synchrony leveled up when the infants interacted with the strange mother in the presence of her body odor. The results showed that infants who were exposed to their mother's scent were more relaxed, smiled and made more eye contact with the stranger.

Sarah Jessen, a neuroscientist at the University of Lbeck in Germany, says that finding that a mother's scent plays an important role in a child's comfort is a nice scientific confirmation of what many parents already do. If a mom leaves for work, she may leave a blanket or piece of clothing with her scent to comfort her child. Jessen believes that this research could be applied to medical settings, like when a mom is separated from her child in a hospital. The experiment with fathers is being repeated by her and her colleagues.

This study is just scratching the surface of the growing field of odor research. She is curious to see if they can identify a specific molecule or chemical in the mother's scent that is driving processes. She says that parents can take comfort in the fact that their baby is smelling and remembering their scent, and that it could help them bond with others. Mishor says that they sniff their babies all the time. It is meaningful for us and for them.

There are some Recommended Videos.

Why does rain have a distinctive smell?

The smell of a summer rain is unforgettable. What is the smell of it? In this one-minute video, Ask Smithsonian host Eric Schulze breaks down the aromas of rain.

Why does rain have a distinctive smell?

01:08