ScienceDirect - Current Biology : The Privileged Brain Representation of First Olfactory Associations

The first smell you associate with an object is given privileged status in the brain.

Yaara Yeshurun and colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel conducted a study on smells and memory, using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The hippocampus showed a characteristic pattern of neural activity when particular smells were represented to the participants. The researchers concluded that the brain reserves a special pattern of activity for memories that represent the first time we have associated a smell with a particular thing – and that such pairings are most likely to be laid down in childhood.

The brain may have evolved to lay down these privileged memories because it enhanced our ability to sense danger. "This is especially true for unpleasant odours," says Yeshurun.

This makes sense, says Rachel Herz, author of The Scent of Desire: Discovering our enigmatic sense of smell and visiting professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. "The evolutionary implication is that the situation in which you first encounter an odour is likely a reliable maker for its meaning, and it is highly adaptive to learn that meaning so that the odour can be responded to appropriately in the future."

This study provides more information about the importance of ensuring immediate skin to skin experience for newborn babies and their mothers. When mothers and babies are enabled to maintain skin to skin proximity at birth, both mother and baby are mapped neurologically to each other through their olfactory system. The importance of this neurological olfactory mapping between mother and baby is profound in terms of the baby identifying feeling safe, secure and calm in her/his mother's presence and having those feelings triggered by the scent of the mother. The feelings the mother experiences with the scent of her baby from birth patterning can be recognised to be similarly profound for the vibrancy of the relationship between them.


ScienceDirect - Current Biology : The Privileged Brain Representation of First Olfactory Associations

Reducing Infant Mortality and improving the health of babies

Listen to Obstetricians, Doulas, Neonatologists, Midwives, Psychologists, Pediatricians, and other Physicians explain how our health care system is failing babies and mothers and what we can do about it.

Reducing Infant Mortality from Debby Takikawa on Vimeo.

Epigenetic modulation at birth – altered DNA-methylation in white blood cells after Caesarean section

Wiley InterScience :: Journal :: Article PDF

The report states:

"The stress of being born exceeds that of any other critical
life-event. It is fundamental for intact survival during the
transition from foetal to neonatal life. The massive sympathoadrenal
activation during labour (1) mobilizes fuel for the
hypoxic journey through the birth canal and triggers lungliquid
resorbtion (2), thereby facilitating air-breathing
immediately after birth. Labour also activates inflammatory
defence systems (3) and the central nervous system in such
way that the foetus is optimally prepared and adapted for
life outside the womb.
Timing and magnitude of birth stress are altered if delivery
is performed with CS. Infants delivered by elective CS
before onset of labour lack the catecholamine surge seen
after normal VD (1). As compared with normal birth, stress
in infants delivered by CS is also immediate rather than
gradually evolved as during labour. CS may therefore be
maladaptive for the newborn infant and has been associated
with increased short-term neonatal morbidity (4)."