Olfaction in the fetal and premature infant: functional status and clinical implications.

This article considers olfaction as a functioning source of information for the fetus and the neonate, born on term or prematurely. It aims to present how odors are involved in the sensory continuity between the prenatal and postnatal environments and how they influence the earliest adaptive responses of newborns in the realms of self-regulation, emotional balance, feeding, and social interactions.Finally, it evaluates odors as sensory means to ameliorate the physiologic and behavioral responses of preterm infants to the adverse impacts of separation from mother, nonoral feeding, or iatrogenic distress.

Revisiting mu suppression in autism spectrum disorder

Two aspects of the EEG literature lead us to revisit mu suppression in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). First and despite the fact that the mu rhythm can be functionally segregated in two discrete sub-bands, 8-10 Hz and 10-12/13 Hz, mu-suppression in ASD has been analyzed as a homogeneous phenomenon covering the 8-13 Hz frequency. Second and although alpha-like activity is usually found across the entire scalp, ASD studies of action observation have focused on the central electrodes (C3/C4). The present study was aimed at testing on the whole brain the hypothesis of a functional dissociation of mu and alpha responses to the observation of human actions in ASD according to bandwidths. Electro…

L’épigenèse de l’hédonisme olfactif et gustatif chez l’enfant

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Human neonatal responses to androstenone

Poster P327 session VII: Olfactory Psychophysics & Clinical Studies; Central Olfaction; Aims. Human newborns show equal attraction to the odors of amniotic. fluid (AF) and mothers’ colostrum [1]. As 5-a-androst-16-en-3-. one (An) has been found in both fluids [2, 3], we studied it as a. potential vector of this perinatal odor continuity and of neonatal. attraction to the smell of breast and milk [4]. Methods. Two studies. were run. 1) We recorded the behavior of 16 newborns (3 days) and. 26 adults exposed to a saturating water solution of An and to 3. reference odorants [butyric acid, B; vanilla, V; water, W]. 2) We videotaped. 26 newborns (3 days) being administered 7 stimuli: 4 dilution. …

Children's reward responses to picture- and odor-cued food stimuli: a developmental analysis between 6 and 11years.

International audience; The reward system is largely involved in the control of food intake. Whether components of this system (i.e., wanting and liking) change during development remains understudied, as well as how proximate factors (sensory cues, motivational state) modulate reward reactivity across development. We examined the developmental pattern of wanting and liking for sensorily-cued food stimuli in 6-11year old children as a function of the child's motivational state (hunger/satiety), gender, and the nature of foods. School children were exposed before or after their lunch on alternative days to visual and odor stimuli representing different categories of familiar foods. Their tas…

L'épigenèse de l'hédonisme olfactif et gustatif chez l'enfant

Responsiveness of human neonates to the odor of 5alpha-androst-16-en-3-one: A behavioral paradox?

The odorous steroid 5alpha-androst-16-en-3-one (AND) occurs in numerous biological fluids in mammals, including man, where it is believed to play a chemocommunicative role. As AND was recently detected in milk and amniotic fluid, sensitivity and hedonic responses to this substance were assessed in human neonates. To this aim, respiration and facial expressions were recorded in 3-day-old newborns in response to aqueous solutions of AND, ranging from 500ng/mL to 0.5 fg/mL. Although analyses of respiratory rate did not lead to clear-cut results, the newborns changed their facial expressions at concentrations not detected by adults in a triangle test. Newborns displayed negative facial actions …

Watching happy faces potentiates incentive salience but not hedonic reactions to palatable food cues in overweight/obese adults

International audience; ‘Wanting’ and ‘liking’ are mediated by distinct brain reward systems but their dissociation in human appetite and overeating remains debated. Further, the influence of socioemotional cues on food reward is little explored. We examined these issues in overweight/obese (OW/OB) and normal-weight (NW) participants who watched food images varying in palatability in the same time as videoclips of avatars looking at the food images while displaying facial expressions (happy, disgust or neutral) with their gaze directed only toward the food or consecutively toward the food and participants. We measured heart rate (HR) deceleration as an index of attentional/incentive salienc…

The human breast as a scent organ: structures, secretions, chemistry and possible functions in mother-infant interactions

Adaptive value of maternal odors in human neonates

The neural networks underlying the liking and wanting responses to food odors are modified in bulimia nervosa

The neural networks underlying the liking and wanting responses to food odors are modified in bulimia nervosa. 25. Congress of the european chemoreception research organisation (ECRO)

Activity of neural reward circuits in response to food odors: an fMRI study of liking and wanting

Evidence for unintentional emotional contagion beyond dyads.

International audience; Little is known about the spread of emotions beyond dyads. Yet, it is of importance for explaining the emergence of crowd behaviors. Here, we experimentally addressed whether emotional homogeneity within a crowd might result from a cascade of local emotional transmissions where the perception of another's emotional expression produces, in the observer's face and body, sufficient information to allow for the transmission of the emotion to a third party. We reproduced a minimal element of a crowd situation and recorded the facial electromyographic activity and the skin conductance response of an individual C observing the face of an individual B watching an individual …

Effects of exposure to olfactory variability during active feeds on the development of sucking performance in preterm infants

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An overlooked aspect of the human breast: areolar glands in relation with breastfeeding pattern, neonatal weight gain, and the dynamics of lactation.

WOS: 000301474900013; International audience; The early nursing-sucking relationship is not to be taken for granted in humans. A number of factors can either facilitate or mitigate its optimal establishment on the mother's or newborn's sides. Among these factors, a morphological feature of human mothers' breasts--the areolar glands (AG)--has been identified as potentially important. Three day-old infants display attraction during the presentation of the native secretions of the AG, suggesting that they could influence the newborn's behaviour during breastfeeding. The present study assessed this topic in a sample of 121 Caucasian mother-infant dyads. The areolae of these women were screened …

Overweight children display enhanced reward responses to food-related pictures and odours

Overweight children display enhanced reward responses to food-related pictures and odours. 19. European congress on obesity (ECO)

Développement social et alimentaire du jeune mammifère

Dysfunction of the mesolimbic circuit to food odors in women with anorexia and bulimia nervosa: A fMRI study

Brain reward dysfunction in eating disorders has been widely reported. However, whether the neural correlates of hedonic and motivational experiences related to food cues are differentially affected in anorexia nervosa of restrictive type (ANr), bulimia nervosa (BN), and healthy control (HC) participants remains unknown. Here, 39 women (14 ANr, 13 BN, and 12 HC) underwent fMRI while smelling food or non-food odors in hunger and satiety states during liking and wanting tasks. ANr and BN patients reported less desire to eat odor-cued food and odor-cued high energy-density food (EDF), respectively. ANr patients exhibited lower ventral tegmental area (VTA) activation than BN patients to food od…

Visual scanning behaviors of 8-month-old infants facing expressive faces

Visual scanning behaviors of 8-month-old infants facing expressive faces. 12. european congress of psychology

Reward for food odors: An fMRI study of liking and wanting as a function of metabolic state and BMI

Brain reward systems mediate liking and wanting for food reward. Here, we explore the differential involvement of the following structures for these two components: the ventral and dorsal striatopallidal area, orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), anterior insula, and anterior cingulate. Twelve healthy female participants were asked to rate pleasantness (liking of food and non-food odors) and the desire to eat (wanting of odor-evoked food) during event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The subjective ratings and fMRI were performed in hunger and satiety states. Activations of regions-of-interest were compared as a function of task (liking vs. wanting), odor category (food vs. non-…

Long-lasting memory for an odor acquired at the mother's breast

Whether neonatal odor memory can persist into toddlerhood and influence behaviors that tap processes related to cognition (attention and exploration), motivation (choice and consumption), and emotion (hedonic processing) remains under-researched. Using a quasi-experimental longitudinal design, we examined whether an odor experienced at the mother’s breast can be retained at 7 and 21 months. The prescribed prophylactic use of a camomile-scented balm defined two groups: infants exposed (CaE) or never exposed (CaNE) to camomile odor. At 7 months, exploratory responses to three similar objects differing in odor (including camomile) were analyzed. At 21 months, three tasks were used to assess to…

Dépression, comportements émotionnels et qualité de vie : une remédiation des états dépressifs par les odeurs est-elle possible ? Quelques liens réciproques éclairés par les sens chimiques

The impact of gender upon the appraisal of the self-relevance of others' angry expressions

The impact of gender upon the appraisal of the self-relevance of others' angry expressions. The consortium of european research on emotion (CERE)

Chemical and behavioral approaches in the elucidation of olfactory interactions between human mothers and newborns

The Human Mammary Odour Factor: Variability and Regularities in Sources and Functions

In the course of evolution, human mothers have been, and still are, under strong selective pressure to induce their newborns’ colostrum ingestion promptly after birth. As a concentrate of nutrients, passive immunity, antioxidants, growth factors and symbiotic microbiota, colostrum functions as the evolved antidote to ubiquitous pathogens and threats of neonatal exhaustion. Under such constraints, any means to speed up colostrum/milk intake can only have been beneficial to neonatal viability and adaptive life onset along evolutionary time. The areolar-nipple areas of human lactating females emit lacteal substrates conveying chemostimuli that are attractive and release mouthing and sucking in…

Emotional communication in the context of joint attention for food stimuli: Effects on attentional and affective processing

Guided by distinct theoretical frameworks (the embodiment theories, shared-signal hypothesis, and appraisal theories), we examined the effects of gaze direction and emotional expressions (joy, disgust, and neutral) of virtual characters on attention orienting and affective reactivity of participants while they were engaged in joint attention for food stimuli contrasted by preference (disliked, moderately liked, and liked). The participants were exposed to videos of avatars looking at food and displaying facial expressions with their gaze directed either toward the food only or toward the food and participants consecutively. We recorded eye-tracking responses, heart rate, facial electromyogr…

Précoces odeurs : perception, effets psychobiologiques, applications au bien-être de l'enfant

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Unconditional response to offensive smells: what we learn from newborns'reactions

Years after years, the accumulation of results permits us to better. understand the development of human food preferences during the. lifespan. The foetal and neonatal periods appear to be very important. in this process. Neonates are attracted to volatile compounds. being present in the amniotic environment (Marlier et al., 1997). Women who consumed garlic, alcohol, anise, or carrot flavour in. late pregnancy produce offsprings that manifest positive responses. towards these odorants, for durations ranging from hours, days to. months (Hepper, 1995; Faas et al., 2000; Schaal et al., 2000; Mennella. et al., 2001). After birth, the exposition to an artificial odorant. (camomile) spread on the…

Interactions entre cognition et émotion au cours des premiers mois du développement postnatal

Manifestations initiales des préférences et des émotions

Dissociation of emotional processes in response to visual and olfactory stimuli following frontotemporal damage.

Contemporary neuropsychological studies have stressed the widely distributed and multicomponential nature of human affective processes. Here, we examined facial electromyographic (EMG) (zygomaticus and corrugator muscle activity), autonomic (skin conductance and heart rate) and subjective measures of affective valence and arousal in patient TG, a 30 year-old man with left anterior mediotemporal and left orbitofrontal lesions resulting from a traumatic brain injury. Both TG and a normal control group were exposed to hedonically valenced visual and olfactory stimuli. In contrast with control subjects, facial EMG and electrodermal activity in TG did not differentiate among pleasant, unpleasant…

Anorexie mentale : analyse des réponses sensorielles et hédoniques explicites et implicites en réponse à des stimulations olfactives et visuelles et au repas

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Emotional expressiveness of 5–6 month-old infants born very premature versus full-term at initial exposure to weaning foods

International audience; Facial expressions of 5-6 month-old infants born preterm and at term were compared while tasting for the first time solid foods (two fruit and two vegetable purees) given by the mother. Videotapes of facial reactions to these foods were objectively coded during the first six successive spoons of each test food using Baby FACS and subjectively rated by naive judges. Infant temperament was also assessed by the parents using the Infant Behaviour Questionnaire. Contrary to our expectations, infants born preterm expressed fewer negative emotions than infants born full-term. Naive judges rated infants born preterm as displaying more liking than their full-term counterparts…

Human neonates prefer colostrum to mature milk: Evidence for an olfactory bias toward the "initial milk"?

International audience; OBJECTIVES: Colostrum is the initial milk secretion which ingestion by neonates warrants their adaptive start in life. Colostrum is accordingly expected to be attractive to newborns. The present study aims to assess whether colostrum is olfactorily attractive for 2-day-old newborns when presented against mature milk or a control. METHODS: The head-orientation of waking newborns was videotaped in three experiments pairing the odors of: (a) colostrum (sampled on postpartum day 2, not from own mother) and mature milk (sampled on average on postpartum day 32, not from own mother) (n tested newborns = 15); (b) Colostrum and control (water; n = 9); and (c) Mature milk and …

The Secretion of Areolar (Montgomery's) Glands from Lactating Women Elicits Selective, Unconditional Responses in Neonates

Background The communicative meaning of human areolae for newborn infants was examined here in directly exposing 3-day old neonates to the secretion from the areolar glands of Montgomery donated by non related, non familiar lactating women. Methodology/Principal Findings The effect of the areolar stimulus on the infants' behavior and autonomic nervous system was compared to that of seven reference stimuli originating either from human or non human mammalian sources, or from an arbitrarily-chosen artificial odorant. The odor of the native areolar secretion intensified more than all other stimuli the infants' inspiratory activity and appetitive oral responses. These responses appeared to deve…

Orofacial reactivity to the sight and smell of food stimuli. Evidence for anticipatory liking related to food reward cues in overweight children.

International audience; Whether food liking may be a risk factor of overconsumption and overweight/obesity remains a controversial issue. So far, most studies used subjective reports to assess consummatory behavior, approaches that might overlook subtle or implicit hedonic changes to sensory properties of foods. Therefore, we used a cue-exposure approach by recording different measures of hedonic processes (orofacial reactivity, self-rated pleasantness, food preference) in 6-11 years old overweight (n=20) and normal-weight (n=20) children. Children were exposed to the smell and sight of high and low-energy density food stimuli and to non-food stimuli during pre- and post-prandial states. Th…

Human breast areolae as scent organs: morphological data and possible involvement in maternal-neonatal coadaptation.

In humans, areolar skin glands (AG) enlarge during pregnancy and lactation. Their role in mother-infant interactions may pertain to protective, mechanical, and communicative functions. It was questioned here whether more profuse AG could be related to more optimal adaptation to breastfeeding. A morphological study of the areolae was undertaken between birth and day 3 to assess the number, secretory status, and spatial distribution of AG. These data were related to infants' weight variation, mothers' perception of their infant's behavior at breast, and time between delivery and onset of lactation. AG were seen in virtually all women but with great interindividual variations; their areolar di…

Food diversification in pre-term infants

Food diversification in pre-term infants. 15. european conference on developmental psychology

The Neural networks underlying the liking and wanting responses to food odors are modified in anorexia nervosa

International audience

Olfaction scaffolds the developing human from neonate to adolescent and beyond

The impact of the olfactory sense is regularly apparent across development. The fetus is bathed in amniotic fluid (AF) that conveys the mother's chemical ecology. Transnatal olfactory continuity between the odours of AF and milk assists in the transition to nursing. At the same time, odours emanating from the mammary areas provoke appetitive responses in newborns. Odours experienced from the mother's diet during breastfeeding, and from practices such as pre-mastication, may assist in the dietary transition at weaning. In parallel, infants are attracted to and recognize their mother's odours; later, children are able to recognize other kin and peers based on their odours. Familiar odours, su…

Le nouveau-né prématuré : un modèle pour l'étude du développement du comportement alimentaire

La naissance prematuree est exemplaire pour comprendre les evenements les plus precoces de la formation des comportements alimentaires. La succession des modes d’alimentation pour subvenir aux besoins nutritifs de l’enfant (alimentation continue ou discontinue ; passive par sonde ou active au sein/biberon ; lait humain ou artificiel ; alimentation par mere ou soignants) ponctue en effet les etapes de la coordination succion-deglutition-respiration et sa capacite a reguler ces evenements. Le contexte particulier des prises alimentaires, peu propice a l’exposition a la variete sensorielle (en particulier chimiosensorielle), croise avec les singularites des pratiques parentales, compose la tra…

The influence of self-relevance on facial reactions to angry body expressions

The influence of self-relevance on facial reactions to angry body expressions. The consortium of european research on emotion (CERE)

Human newborns match tongue protrusion of disembodied human and robotic mouths

International audience; No evidence had been provided so far of newborns' capacity to give a matching response to 2D stimuli. We report evidence from 18 newborns who were presented with three types of stimuli on a 2D screen. The stimuli were video-recorded displays of tongue protrusion shown by: (a) a human face, (b) a human tongue from a disembodied mouth, and (c) an artificial tongue from a robotic mouth. Compared to a baseline condition, neonates increased significantly their tongue protrusion when seeing disembodied human and artificial tongue movements, but not when seeing a 2D full-face protruding tongue. This result was interpreted as revealing the exploration of top-heavy patterns o…

Neural correlates of food odors: "liking" and "wanting" reward network

International audience

Mimicking emotions: how 3–12-month-old infants use the facial expressions and eyes of a model

International audience; While there is an extensive literature on the tendency to mimic emotional expressions in adults, it is unclear how this skill emerges and develops over time. Specifically, it is unclear whether infants mimic discrete emotion-related facial actions, whether their facial displays are moderated by contextual cues and whether infants’ emotional mimicry is constrained by developmental changes in the ability to discriminate emotions. We therefore investigate these questions using Baby-FACS to code infants’ facial displays and eye-movement tracking to examine infants’ looking times at facial expressions. Three-, 7-, and 12-month-old participants were exposed to dynamic faci…

L'enfant face aux aliments: d'avant-goûts en préférences en programmations

Self-Relevance Appraisal Influences Facial Reactions to Emotional Body Expressions

International audience; People display facial reactions when exposed to others' emotional expressions, but exactly what mechanism mediates these facial reactions remains a debated issue. In this study, we manipulated two critical perceptual features that contribute to determining the significance of others' emotional expressions: the direction of attention (toward or away from the observer) and the intensity of the emotional display. Electromyographic activity over the corrugator muscle was recorded while participants observed videos of neutral to angry body expressions. Self-directed bodies induced greater corrugator activity than other-directed bodies; additionally corrugator activity was…

A thread from amnion to milk to food: flavour continuities over birth and weaning transitions

Olfaction and taste engage oral activity from birth. Odorants and tastants are thus in a good position to modulate the first milk intake responses and the selective acceptance of non-milk foods around weaning. In the perinatal period, the biological fluids – amniotic fluid and milk – that contact the nasal/oral chemosensors carry stimuli which are salient to newborns. Amniotic fluid and milk are at first treated by infants as sensorily/motivationally equivalent, giving credit to the double notion of a chemosensory overlap between perinatal ecologies and of neonatal preparation by foetal experience to attend certain stimuli more than others. Tests of several predictions derived from this hyp…

Visual exploration and discrimination of emotional facial expressions in 3-, 7- and 12-month-old infants

The first year of life is critical in the development of the abilities to process facial expressions. Numerous studies have investigated discrimination and categorization of distinct facial expressions of emotion. However, infants' visual exploratory strategies of these facial expressions and their developmental paths remain unclear. The perfection of eye movement tracking systems makes now the detailed analysis of facial exploration of faces feasible, and hence facilitates the identification of the features in facial expressions which infants focus on. In this study, oculometric parameters of 3- (n=36), 7- (n=66) and 12-month-old infants (n=59) were collected while facial expressions were …

Exploration oculaire du visage et expression faciale chez le jeune enfant : une approche qualitative du développement cognitif et social

National audience

Lasting Odor Memories Acquired while Sucking on the Mother's Breast

Satiation-related changes in olfactory hedonismheterogeneous effects for food and non-food odours

Subliminal fear priming potentiates negative facial reactions to food pictures in women with anorexia nervosa.

BackgroundTo investigate hedonic reactivity and the influence of unconscious emotional processes on the low sensitivity to positive reinforcement of food in anorexia nervosa (AN).MethodAN and healthy women were exposed to palatable food pictures just after a subliminal exposure to facial expressions (happy, disgust, fear and neutral faces), either while fasting or after a standardized meal (hungerversussatiety). Both implicit [facial electromyographic (EMG) activity from zygomatic and corrugator muscles, skin conductance, heart rate, and videotaped facial behavior] and explicit (self-reported pleasure and desire) measures of affective processes were recorded.ResultsIn contrast to healthy wo…