爲什麼新生兒寶寶聞起來香香的
Baby heads smell amazing. I should know - I've had three babies, and with each birth, I've found myself intoxicated by the warm funky scent of that downy newborn crown. It's not just me, either; I've had friends, family members, even strangers ask to sniff my children's heads.
寶寶的頭聞起來香香的。我知道--因爲我有三個孩子，每生一個，我就會沉浸在長滿細毛的嬰兒頭的溫暖氣味中。不僅只有我一個人這麼做，我的朋友、家裏人，甚至是陌生人都會聞一聞孩子的頭。There's a reason for that, and it's not just that a bunch of adults all happen to be weird in the same way. As research has shown, that blissful baby smell is real, and it's a valuable little biological trick for keeping babies alive.
這是有原因的，這並不是因爲我們這羣大人有怪癖。研究已經表明，幸福的嬰兒氣味確有其事，而它也是讓寶寶活下去的寶貴生物妙招。
"As anyone with a baby knows, newborns are not too much fun to be around. They sleep, eat, and make you change the diapers. Still, most if not all parents say that having a baby is one of the greatest experiences," says physician Johannes Frasnelli, an anatomy professor at the University of Quebec. "So, of course, there must be mechanisms which allow for a very strong bond between parents, especially mothers, and the baby. We think that the odor of babies is involved in one of these mechanisms" - that babies draw in parents with their scent to ensure they're kept fed, warm, and safe.
"任何有寶寶的人都知道，新生兒並不有趣。他們睡覺、喝奶、讓你換尿布。但絕大多數家長認爲生寶寶是最棒的經歷之一，"魁北克大學解剖學教授約翰內斯·弗拉斯內利醫師說道。"當然，父母，尤其是母親與嬰兒間的牢固紐帶肯定是有一定機制的。我們認爲寶寶的香味就屬於這種機制"--寶寶用他們的香味吸引父母以確保自己吃好喝好並處於安全的環境。
"In fact," he adds, "many people, mainly parents, will say that the baby odor is one of the most pleasant/best odors they have ever smelled."
"事實上，"他補充說，"很多人，主要是父母，都會說他們聞過的最好聞的味道就是嬰兒的香味了。"In 2013, Frasnelli co-authored a study in the journal Frontiers in Psychology that looked closely at how women responded to the scent of newborn body odor. He and his colleagues recruited 30 women, including 15 who had just given birth and 15 who had never, and had them each smell the scent of an unfamiliar newborn who was less than 2 days old. The results confirmed what moms everywhere already know: Baby smell is mesmerizing. Brain scans of the participants showed that "body odors from 2 day-old newborns elicit activation in reward-related cerebral areas in women," the study authors wrote. In fact, it didn't appear to matter whether the subjects had previously given birth or not; the brains of women from both categories reacted to the baby smell as if it were a delicious treat, or even a drug.
2013年，弗拉斯內利在《心理學前沿》期刊上合著了一篇研究，仔細觀察了女性如何對新生兒寶寶的氣味做出反應。他和他的同事招募了30位女性，其中15位剛生完寶寶，而另外15位則沒有生孩子的經歷，研究員讓這些女性聞了剛出生不到2天的嬰兒寶寶的氣味，這個寶寶是她們都不認識的人。研究結果證實了世界各地母親都知道的事情："寶寶出生兩天後，其氣味令人着迷，能激活女性與獎勵相關的大腦區域，"研究作者寫道。事實上，受試者之前有沒有生過孩子並不重要，對於研究中的兩類女性而言，她們的大腦對嬰兒的氣味都做出了反應，就好像那是甜品，甚至是毒品的氣味。
