Why a mother's sense of hearing and smell are heightened when her distressed children need her

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER


A mother's senses of hearing and smell are heightened by the maternal instinct to recognise distress calls from her children, research shows.

Scientists looked at how changes to the brain that occur during pregnancy help develop the maternal instinct, a female’s urge to protect her offspring that is found in humans and animals.

They found that the senses of hearing and smell were both changed in the brain, which they believe is nature’s way of ensuring the mother can care for her offspring.


Maternal: Scientists examined the reaction of female mice to pup odours before monitoring the response of their brains to the sounds of their pups.

The team, from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, studied normal mice, mice that had interacted with their pups and mice who had recently given birth and were still lactating.

They examined the reaction of female mice to pup odours before monitoring the response of their brains to the sounds of their pups.

Study author Dr Adi Mizrahi claims the findings ‘suggest that motherhood is associated with a previously undescribed form of multisensory processing in part of the brain called the auditory cortex.'

He said: 'We know that distinct brain changes are linked with motherhood, but the impact of these changes on sensory processing and the emergence of maternal behaviours are largely unknown.

'In mice, olfactory and auditory cues play a major role in the communication between a mother and her pups.

'Therefore, we hypothesized that there may be some interaction between olfactory and auditory processing so that pup odours might modulate the way pup calls are processed in the mother’s brain.'

He added: 'We have shown that motherhood is associated with a rapid and robust appearance of olfactory-auditory integration in the primary auditory cortex occurring along with stimulus-specific adaptation to pup distress calls.

'These processes help to explain how changes in neocortical networks facilitate efficient detection of pups by their caring mothers.'

The results of the study were published in the journal Neuron.


source:dailymail