Maternal cuddling during infancy can help today's children "resist" the temptation to use drugs and other addictive substances when they reach adulthood. This is what is deduced from a study carried out by Duke University (USA) and the University of Adelaide (Australia) and published in The Journal of Neuroscience . According to Staci Bilbo, a neuroscientist and co-author of the work, in experiments with rats they have shown that having a lot of physical contact with the mother increases the production of a molecule of the immune system called Interleukin-10 (IL-10) that is capable of modifying the response of the brain to substances that create addiction .
Bilbo and his colleagues have found that the brains of animals that had received more maternal caresses after birth had more active genes destined to produce this substance. After consuming a drug such as morphine, glia cells are activated in the mammalian brain that produce inflammatory molecules that send signals to a reward center called the nucleus accumbens. However, when the IL-10 molecule comes into play, it counteracts this inflammation and reduces the reward signal, thus preventing addiction from developing. Surprisingly, the more maternal cuddles received at an early age, the greater the ability to produce this substance.
