Are fears inherited from mothers to children? 2026

Until now, it was thought that fears are inherited through education and the mother-child bond. However, a study suggests that babies learn to fear by smelling the aroma that their mothers emanate when faced with difficulties. The investigation goes further. A child can not only detect "natural" fears, but also recognize those that his mother has experienced before pregnancy.

In the first direct observation of this type of fear transmission, a team from the University of Michigan Medical School and New York University (United States) studied mother rats that had learned to fear the smell of peppermint and showed how they "teach" this fear to their babies in their first days of life through the alarm odor they release during distress.

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Traumatic experiences that are transmitted

In an article published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team describes how they identified the specific area of the brain where this fear transmission takes place in the first days of life. Their results in animals may help explain a phenomenon that has baffled mental health experts: how a mother's traumatic experience can profoundly affect her children, even when it happens long before they are born. "During the first days of life, a baby rat is immune to learning information about environmental dangers. But if their mother is the source of the threat information, they can learn from it and produce lasting memories," says research leader Jacek Debiec, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at UM.

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"Our research shows that infants can learn from the maternal expression of fear very early in life. Even before they can have their own experiences, they essentially acquire experiences from their mothers. More importantly, these maternally transmitted memories are long-lasting, while other types of infant learning, if not repeated, quickly perish."

The scientists also hope that their work will lead to a better understanding of why not all children of traumatized mothers or mothers with major phobias or other anxiety disorders or major depression experience the same effects.

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