I was sent a very interesting study entitled, Parental olfactory experience influences behavior and neural structure in subsequent generations. The study was conducted by Brian G Dias & Kerry J Ressler in 2013.
The study examined inheritance of parental traumatic exposure using olfactory molecular specificity in mice. They subjected mice to olfactory fear conditioning before the mice conceived and found that the next 2 generations of mice had an increased behavioral sensitivity to the odor that the original mice were fear conditioned with, but not to any other odors. To further confirm their findings they used IVF and cross-fostering and again saw the same behavioral sensitivity response. They also observed that the sperm of the first and second generation of mice and found epigenetic marks that could be the basis for such biological inheritance.
"Our findings provide a framework for addressing how environmental information may be inherited transgenerationally at behavioral, neuroanatomical and epigenetic levels. (Dias & Ressler, 2013)"
"From a translational perspective, our results allow us to appreciate how the experiences of a parent, before even conceiving offspring, markedly influence both structure and function in the nervous system of subsequent generations. Such a phenomenon may contribute to the etiology and potential intergenerational transmission of risk for neuropsychiatric disorders, such as phobias, anxiety and posttraumatic stress disorder50. To conclude, we interpret these results as highlighting how generations can inherit information about the salience of specific stimuli in ancestral environments so that their behavior and neuroanatomy are altered to allow for appropriate stimulus-specific responses. (Dias & Ressler, 2013)"
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