

These areolar structures enlarge during pregnancy and lactation, and can give off a noticeable latescent fluid after parturition (cf. Distributed on the areolae, these glands are formed by coalesced sebaceous and lactiferous units. Īnother mammary source of potentially significant odor cues has received virtually no empirical consideration about its function, although it becomes morphologically conspicuous in lactating women: the glands of Montgomery. In addition, this primal attractive potency of human milk odor to newborns is not easily reassigned by engaging them to learn an artificial odorant in association with nursing. Interestingly, however, the early positive bias of human newborns in favor of odor cues in human milk does not depend on prior breastfeeding experience, because neither term-born infants exclusively fed formula, neither premature infants, , react to these cues in the same way as do exclusively breast-fed infants. These appear to carry arousing and attractive properties for newborns. The most studied sources of natural volatiles emanating from the breast are obviously colostrum and milk. Furthermore, it elicits positive head turning, ,, stimulates oral appetitive activity, , and may induce directional crawling in newborns. Breast odor reduces arousal states in active newborns, and increases them in sleepy ones –. Three decades of research have demonstrated that naturally-emitted volatile compounds from the breast of lactating women impinge on the behavior of human newborns in several ways. In particular, a range of odorous substrates are locally emitted in colostrum or milk, or in the secretions of areolar glands. Indeed, in human females, the nipple-areolar region concentrates several features of potential chemo-communicative meaning directed to the suckling infant. Accordingly, their structure and function should be evolutionarily shaped to optimize, on the one hand, an efficient mother-to-infant transfer of water, nutrients, and immuno-protective factors carried in milk, and, on the other hand, the infant's rapid learning of sensory cues related to maternal identity and to significant events maximizing individual fitness.

Hedonic glands skin#
It is concluded that the product of hedonic glands is a sulfated mucin that is discharged in response to cholinergic stimulation of muscarinic receptors in myoepithelial cells.Nipples and adjacent skin ( areolae in primates) bear a pivotal role in mammalian reproduction: they constitute the minimal areas of the females' body to enter in obligatory and recurrent contact with the offspring during lactation. Since hedonic glands, but not mucous glands, from breeding newts of both sexes incorporated 35SO 4 into their product, bands from hedonic glands could be distinguished from those of mucous glands in gels. A smaller but similar band from hedonic glands of breeding females correlated with one of the two. Two PAS (+) bands were present in polyacrylamide gels prepared from secretions discharged by hedonic glands after treatment of male newts in breeding conformation with pilocarpine HCL and also in gels from skin samples containing mucous glands, but were absent from hedonic secretions of laboratory conditioned males. Preincubation in the muscarinic blocking agent atropine sulfate, but not in nicotinic blocking agent d-tubocurarine chloride, prevented the cholinergic response. Mean luminal diameters of hedonic glands in explants incubated in solutions of acetyl choline decreased by 58% of control values while those of explants incubated in solutions of epinephrine remained the same. Endings of unmyelinated axons, containing both clear and dense-cored synaptic vesicles, were seen to lie between the myoepithelium and the secretory epithelium, occasionally touching on the myoepithelial cells. The ultrastructure of the myoepithelium has been studied. The mechanism whereby secretory product is extruded from the lumina of hedonic glands in the red-spotted newt has been investigated and the chemical nature of that product has been examined.
