AP51651

Science Summary

University of Michigan Health System has done a study that suggests a baby can learn to fear what its mother fears by the odor of the distressed mothers. The study also suggest this isn’t limited to the natural fears of the mother but also the irrational fears the mother may have developed in response to life experiences. “In the first direct observation of this kind of fear transmission, a team of University of Michigan Medical School and New York University studied mother rats who had learned to fear the smell of peppermint -- and showed how they "taught" this fear to their babies in their first days of life through their alarm odor released during distress. ” (University of Michigan Health System) The study was able to pinpoint the area of the brain that is used to transmit the fear response and thus indicate the instant of the learned fear response to stimuli, which in this case was peppermint, allowing them to answer questions that had puzzled mental health experts for generations. The primary of those questions was how a mother’s traumatic experiences even from long before the pregnancy and birth of the children could be learned in their first days of life. This brings the question of the laws of the primacy and recency effects on learning as to how long the learned fears will last in the rats and how long they will last in humans. (Wood, 176) With further research this study and Peer review these findings could lead to making great strides in helping with the elimination of phobias and other learned fears in Humans.

References:

University of Michigan Health System. (2014, July 28). Learning the smell of fear: Mothers teach babies their own fears via odor, animal study shows. ScienceDaily. Retrieved August 4, 2014 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140728153634.htm

Wood, Samuel E., Ellen R. Green. Wood, and Denise Roberts. Boyd. //Mastering the World of Psychology//. Fourth ed. Boston: Pearson/Allyn and Bacon, 2011. Print.

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