Children raised without being regularly hugged, caressed, or stroked - deprived of the physical reassurance of normal family attention - have abnormally high levels of stress hormones, according to new research on Roumanian orphans raised in state-run wards.

Moreover, new animal research reveals that without the attention of a loving care-giver early in life, some of an infant's brain cell's simply commit suicide. While the growing brain naturally prunes cells during development - losing up to half by adulthood - the neurons in the neglected animals died at twice the rate as those animals kept with their mothers.

"What we found shocked us." psychologist Mark Smith at the Du Pont Merck Research Labs in Wilmington, Del., said Monday. Smith analyzed the effects of maternal deprivation in laboratory animals. "Maternal separation caused these cells in the brain to die."

"The effects of maternal deprivation may be much more profound than we had imagined.", he said. "Does this have implications for humans? Frankly, I hope not, but I suspect there may be."

Scientists have known for decades that maternal deprivation can mark children for life with serious behavioral problems, leaving them withdrawn, apathetic, slow to learn, and prone to chronic illness. But a range of new research, presented in New Orleans at a meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, reveals for the first time the biochemical consequences of emotional neglect on the developing brain.

It has been known for a long time that early experience is able to shape the brain and behavior," said Ron de Kloet, an expert on stress and endocrine system at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. "Only recently have we been able to go into:> the brain and measure what is actually happening in early experience."

It is the relationship between parental care, the neurobiology of touch, and the chemistry of stress that lies at the heart of the new insights in how a newborn brain takes shape.

Researchers said that neglect can warp the brain's developing neural circuits so that they produce too much or too little of the hormones that control responses to stress, causing permanent changes in the way an organism behaves and responds to the world around it. In infants, high levels of stress can impair growth and development of the brain and body.

In animal studies, "the presence of the mother ensures these stress hormones remain at a nice low level," said Michael Meaney at the Douglas Hospital Research Center in Montreal.

New laboratory research by Meaney and other neuroscientists highlights the long-range biochemical consequences of neglect and the effect of maternal care on the development of brain regions that control responses to stress.

Studies with laboratory animals show that the simple act of a mother licking her pup triggers a surprisingly subtle chain of biochemical events inside the infant's brain. As the mother physically comforts her newborn, it stimulates the production of key biochemicals that inhibit production of a master stress hormone called CRH.

To determine whether these new laboratory insights apply to human child rearing, researchers are now assessing the changing brain chemistry of children and the attention then receive from their primary care giver, be it mother, father, or day-care worker

ROCKLAND COUNTY JOURNAL NEWS, Tuesday September 10, 1996 Remnants of babies stay with mothers for years - By Karl Leif Bates Gannott News Service

Mothers and children have a special bond, and it is deeper than you might imagine.

It turns out a mother carries in her bloodstream, for decades after they are born, a little piece of every baby she has had.

A research team that includes a Wayne State University (Detroit) professor stumbled across the discovery while trying to develop a noninvasive test for detecting birth defects.

The finding raises a host of interesting questions, not the least of which is how the obviously alien cells manage to eke out a living for decades without attracting attention from the mother's immune system.

"Everybody's curious about this' said Dr. Mark Evans, a medical professor and member of the team. But the goal of the study is to develop a reliable test for birth defects, a task that may take several more years.

As part of its research, the team drew the blood of pregnant women and screened the blood for fetal cells.

In the blood samples from women who ended up having female children they found Y chromosomes, the genetic marker of a male baby. We knew that didn't belong to the mom, and it didn't seem to belong to the current fetus." said Dr. Diana W. Bianchi, chief of perinatal genetics at Boston's New England Medical Center.

Thinking it could be a lab mistake, the researchers looked again, this time drawing blood from women who previously.had carried boys but who now were pregnant with girls.

All four women carried fetal cells with Y chromosomes.

Then they looked at eight mothers who were not pregnant but who had given birth to a son in the past three decades. Six of the eight carried fetal cells with a Y chromosome. One of the women had delivered her last boy 27 years ago.

"As a working mother who travels quite a bit it's comforting to me to know that I carry my children with me," Bianchi said with a laugh.

The cells they found are immature white blood cells of the male babies, though Bianchi is sure the cells of female babies also are left behind.

"It's just much easier~to track the Y chromosomes she said

Female cells occur in very small numbers in the mother's bloodstream and must be sorted with with several techniques to be isolated for study.

"It's literally like looking for needle in a haystack," Evans said. If the proposed blood test for fetal genetic defects can be perfected, the technique would I'd safer than amniocentesis which involves piercing the uterus with a large needle. Amniocentesis can cause miscarriages about once in very 200 tests.

"If we can get this to work, you could get the same answers that we get with an invasive test," Evans said.

What we now know about the separation of the neonate from its mother indicates a lifelong impact on both mother and child. The neonate has already bonded with its mother. In the last trimester the fetus knows the sounds and rhythms of its mothers heartbeat and respiration, knows mother's voice and immediately after birth "memorizes" her smell.

The separation from everything safe is a psychic shock to the neonate, a trauma that leads to enduring psychological issues, including identity and relationship problems and low self-esteem. ( (Incubator babies exhibit some of the same effects later in life.) Mothers who have surrendered children will have similar difficulties.

We should follow the Australian example: A mother may not surrender a child to adoption until it is two months old; after surrender, the mother has two months to change her mind, and if she does so, the child is immediately returned to her. In addition, pregnant women need to be given nonjudgmental about the ramifications of their choices. The psychological needs of babies must be understood so that decisions are truly in the child's best interest. JOSEPH M. SOLL

New York, August 3, 1993 The writer is a psychotherapist.

Furthermore as documented m the April Issue of Pediatrics, overzealous application of perfume during the first few days after birth can mislead the baby and block bonding.

Newborns learn to prefer the odor of their mother and this preference allows them to maintain contact and to find the mother's nipple for the purpose of nursing," said Dr. Michael Leon, professor of psychology at the University of California at Irvine. "A new mother wearing very heavy perfume may overwhelm her actual odor and make it difficult for natural bonding to occur."

Research on rats and other mammals had revealed similar patterns. Dr. Leon and his colleagues discovered that the "primary olfactory memory" is established in as little as 10 minutes for humans. However there must be supplemental tactile stimulation or this special memory will not become permanently enmeshed in the brain's processes. This insures that infants do not attach themselves to other airborne odors.

"We took babies, with their mothers' permission and placed them on a bassinet where they were exposed to a citrus odor while we stroked them lightly on the torso for 10 minutes," said Dr. Leon. "The next day they again placed in a bassinet and allowed to turn toward the citrus odor. Almost invariably they expressed a preference by turning toward that odor." Besides helping relieve nursing deficiencies these experiments could "expedite the diagnosis" and early treatment of cognitive disorders in newborns, the researchers wrote.