ReviewDevelopmental neuroscience2012
The development and neurobiology of infant attachment and fear.
Review in Developmental neuroscience, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 98 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
98 citing papers in PubMed, 178 citations in OpenAlex.
- Maternal Social Support Reshapes the Offspring Brain Transcriptome to Buffer Prenatal Stress in Mice.Research square · 2026Article
- Taste exposure during different developmental phases impacts aversion learning in adult rats.Behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- The Development of Trait Anxiety in Nonhuman Primates During the First Year of Life.Developmental science · 2026Article
- Causal Effects of Enhanced Parenting on Resting-State Graph Properties of Adolescents at Risk for Maltreatment.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2026Article
- The expression of father-daughter bond behaviors influences adult partner attachment in titi monkeys.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- When Mothers and Fathers Are 'Gone': Predicting Intergenerational Cycles of Risk in Opioid-Involved Parents.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Early-life stress sensitizes response to future stress: Evidence and mechanisms.Neurobiology of stress · 2025Review
- Potential for the medial prefrontal cortex to link mentalizing and attachment schemas.Social cognitive and affective neuroscience · 2025Review
- Neurons for infant social behaviors in the mouse zona incerta.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2024Article
- Across ages and places: Unpredictability of maternal sensory signals and child internalizing behaviors.Journal of affective disorders · 2024Article
- Possible roles of deep cortical neurons and oligodendrocytes in the neural basis of human sociality.Anatomical science international · 2024Review
- Neural Circuit Transitions Supporting Developmentally Specific Social Behavior.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2023Review
- The frontal sharp transient in newborns: An endogenous neurobiomarker concomitant to the physiological and critical transitional period around delivery?Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2023Article
- The role of developmental caregiving programming in modulating our affiliation tendency and the vulnerability to social anxiety and eating disorders.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Early development of olfactory circuit function.Frontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2023Review
- Modeling heritability of temperamental differences, stress reactivity, and risk for anxiety and depression: Relevance to research domain criteria (RDoC).The European journal of neuroscience · 2022Review
- Precise and Pervasive Phasic Bursting in Locus Coeruleus during Maternal Behavior in Mice.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2022Article
- Early life exposure to unpredictable parental sensory signals shapes cognitive development across three species.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2022Review
- Differential effects by sex with Kmt5b loss.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2021Article
- Smell and Stress Response in the Brain: Review of the Connection between Chemistry and Neuropharmacology.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
38 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Survival of altricial infants depends on attachment to the caregiver - a process that requires infants to identify, learn, remember, and approach their attachment figure. Here we review the neurobiology of attachment in infant rats where learning about the caregiver is supported by a specialized attachment neural circuitry to promote the infant-caregiver relationship. Specifically, the attachment circuit relies on infants acquiring learned preferences to the maternal odor, and this behavior is supported by the hyperfunctioning locus coeruleus and generous amounts of norepinephrine to produce experience-induced changes in the olfactory bulb and anterior piriform cortex. Infants also possess a reduced ability to acquire learned aversions or fear, and this behavior is facilitated through attenuated amygdala plasticity to block fear learning. Presumably, this attachment circuitry constrains the infant animal to express only learned preferences regardless of the quality of care received. As pups mature, and begin to travel in and out of the nest, the specialized attachment learning becomes contextually confined to when pups are with the mother. Thus, when outside the nest, these older pups show learning more typical of adult learning, presumably to prepare for independent life outside the nest. The quality of attachment can alter this circuitry, with early life stress prematurely terminating the pups' access to the attachment system through premature functional activation of the amygdala. Overall, the attachment circuit appears to have a dual function: to keep pups close to the caregiver but also to shape pups' behavior to match the environment and define long-term emotion and cognition.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.