ReviewDevelopmental cognitive neuroscience2020
Maternal odor reduces the neural response to fearful faces in human infants.
Review in Developmental cognitive neuroscience, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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.
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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
19 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 38 citations in OpenAlex.
- The effect of breast milk odor on infant pain and stress levels: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC pediatrics · 2025Pooled it
- Scent of a father: Paternal body odors boost interbrain synchrony.Science advances · 2026Article
- Breastfeeding, bonding, and olfaction: unlocking the potential of mother-infant odour exchange.EBioMedicine · 2026Review
- Neural Tracking of the Maternal Voice in the Infant Brain.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- It's Safe to Look: Maternal Touch Affects Infants' Fear Bias.Developmental science · 2025Article
- Past, Present, and Future of Human Chemical Communication Research.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2025Review
- Dynamic developmental changes in neurotransmitters supporting infant attachment learning.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2023Review
- Infant factors that impact the ecology of human milk secretion and composition-a report from "Breastmilk Ecology: Genesis of Infant Nutrition (BEGIN)" Working Group 3.The American journal of clinical nutrition · 2023Review
- A neural marker of rapid discrimination of facial expression in 3.5- and 7-month-old infants.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2022Article
- Maternal chemosignals enhance infant-adult brain-to-brain synchrony.Science advances · 2021Article
- Peak selection and latency jitter correction in developmental event-related potentials.Developmental psychobiology · 2021Article
- The scent of attraction and the smell of success: crossmodal influences on person perception.Cognitive research: principles and implications · 2021Review
- Odor-driven face-like categorization in the human infant brain.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Olfaction in the Multisensory Processing of Faces: A Narrative Review of the Influence of Human Body Odors.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Review
- The importance of the olfactory system in human well-being, through nutrition and social behavior.Cell and tissue research · 2021Review
- Elevated infant cortisol is necessary but not sufficient for transmission of environmental risk to infant social development: Cross-species evidence of mother-infant physiological social transmission.Development and psychopathology · 2020Article
- Olfaction Modulates Inter-Subject Correlation of Neural Responses.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2020Article
- Olfactory-to-visual facilitation in the infant brain declines gradually from 4 to 12 months.Child developmentArticle
- How Does Paternal Odor Influence Perception of Fearful and Happy Faces in Infancy?Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant StudiesArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Maternal odor is known to play an important role in mother-infant-interaction in many altricial species such as rodents. However, we only know very little about its role in early human development. The present study therefore investigated the impact of maternal odor on infant brain responses to emotional expression. We recorded the electroencephalographic (EEG) signal of seven-month-old infants watching happy and fearful faces. Infants in two control groups exposed to no specific odor (control 1) or the odor of a different infant's mother (control 2) showed the expected EEG fear response. Crucially, this response was markedly absent in the experimental group exposed to their mother's odor. Thus, infants respond differently to fear signals in the presence of maternal odor. Our data therefore suggest that maternal odor can be a strong modulator of social perception in human infants.
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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.