Triggers for mother love

Abstract

Previous studies showed that baby monkeys separated from their mothers develop strong and lasting attachments to inanimate surrogate mothers, but only if the surrogate has a soft texture; soft texture is more important for the infant’s attachment than is the provision of milk. Here I report that postpartum female monkeys also form strong and persistent attachments to inanimate surrogate infants, that the template for triggering maternal attachment is also tactile, and that even a brief period of attachment formation can dominate visual and auditory cues indicating a more appropriate target.

Emerging principles in functional representations of touch

“…Self-touch is important for bodily self-calibration and higher-level aspects of bodily awareness, such as body ownership 156 . Other-touch, in contrast, is likely to have important roles in social bonding and attachment 170,171 .…”