← Search

Flavor Sensing in Utero and Emerging Discriminative Behaviors in the Human Fetus

Beyza Ustun¹; Nadja Reissland¹; Judith Covey¹; Benoist Schaal²; Jacqueline Blissett³

¹ Department of Psychology, Durham University · ² Developmental Ethology and Cognitive Psychology Laboratory, Centre for Taste, Smell and Feeding Behaviour Science, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), UMR 6265, Université de Bourgogne · ³ School of Psychology, Institute of Health and Neurodevelopment, College of Health and Life Sciences, Aston University

The diet of pregnant women exposes fetuses to a variety of flavors consisting of compound sensations involving smell, taste, and chemesthesis. The effects of such prenatal flavor exposure on chemosensory development have so far been measured only postnatally in human infants. Here, we report the first direct evidence of human fetal responsiveness to flavors transferred via maternal consumption of a single-dose capsule by measuring frame-by-frame fetal facial movements. Pregnant women and their fetuses based in the northeast of England were involved in this study from 32 to 36 weeks’ gestation. Fetuses exposed to carrot flavor ( n = 35) showed “lip-corner puller” and “laughter-face gestalt” more frequently, whereas fetuses exposed to kale flavor ( n = 34) showed more “upper-lip raiser,” “lower-lip depressor,” “lip stretch,” “lip presser,” and “cry-face gestalt” in comparison with the carrot group and a control group not exposed to any flavors ( n = 30). The complexity of facial gestalts increased from 32 to 36 weeks in the kale condition, but not in the carrot condition. Findings of this study have important implications for understanding the earliest evidence for fetal abilities to sense and discriminate different flavors.

DOI

10.1177/09567976221105460

Volume

33 (10)

Pages

1651-1663

Language

en

Export

BibTeX

Sources

crossref