By studying the ability of newborn rabbit pups to learn the significance of new odors, researchers have found that a mammary pheromone secreted in mother's milk may act as a chemical booster that facilitates the ability of pups to quickly associate environmental odors with the opportunity to nurse. The findings, which deepen our understanding of pheromone function and how learning occurs in the earliest days of life, are reported in the October 10th issue of the journal Current Biology, published by Cell Press, by a team including Grard Coureaud and Anne-Sophie Moncomble and colleagues from the Centre Europen des Sciences du Got in Dijon, which is supported by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and the Universit de Bourgogne and Inra. Benoist Schaal, another author of the study, is the director of the Centre Europen des Sciences du Got.

Newborn mammals are highly dependent on their mother's milk for survival, and they typically exhibit a defined sequence of actions when searching for milk. This searching behavior rapidly becomes increasingly directed, showing that mammalian newborns are efficient learners. Past studies of this very early learning in the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) have shown that newborn pups engage in typical food-searching movements in response to olfactory signals that include the mammary pheromone secreted in mother's milk. The ability of newborns to rapidly improve their milk-finding skills likely involves learning that "new" odors--for example, those from the mother's abdomen, or of milk itself--are associated with food.

In the new work, the researchers investigated whether the mammary pheromone plays a role in the ability of newborns to learn to associate other odors with the availability of milk. By presenting newborns with the pheromone in combination with an otherwise "neutral" odor and subsequently testing whether the neutral odor alone would later elicit the typical food-searching behavi
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Contact: Heidi Hardman
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617-397-2879
Cell Press
9-Oct-2006