Search results for "Mouth movements"
showing 3 items of 3 documents
Prenatal Mouth Movements: Can We Identify Co-Ordinated Fetal Mouth and LIP Actions Necessary for Feeding?
2012
Observations of prenatal movement patterns of mouth and lips essential for feeding could have the potential for an assessment of the readiness to feed after birth. Although there is some research on suckingper se, we know very little about prenatal preparatory movements for sucking, namely, the ability to co-ordinate opening the mouth widely and then pursing the lips as if around a teat or nipplein utero. The purpose of the present study was to test two hypotheses using an adapted version of the Facial Action Coding Scheme: first that mouth stretch (AU 27) will be followed by lip pucker (AU 18), and second that these coordinated movement patterns will increase as a function of gestational a…
Reward Unpredictability inside and outside of a Task Context as a Determinant of the Responses of Tonically Active Neurons in the Monkey Striatum
2001
Tonically active neurons (TANs) in the monkey striatum are involved in detecting motivationally relevant stimuli. We recently provided evidence that the timing of conditioned stimuli strongly influences the responsiveness of TANs, the source of which is likely to be the monkey's previous experience with particular temporal regularities in sequential task events. To extend these findings, we investigated the relationship of TAN responses to a primary liquid reward, the timing of which is more or less predictable to the monkey either outside of a task or during instrumental task performance. Reward predictability was indexed by the timing characteristics of the mouth movements. The responsive…
The development of anticipation in the fetus: A longitudinal account of human fetal mouth movements in reaction to and anticipation of touch
2013
Research suggests that fetuses open or close their mouth in relation to directed movements but it is unclear whether mouth opening anticipates the touch or is a reaction to touch, as there has been no analysis so far of (1) the facial area of touch and (2) the sequential ordering of touch and mouth movements. If there is prenatal development of the anticipation of touch we would expect the frequency of fetal mouth opening immediately preceding the arriving hand at the mouth area to increase with fetal age. Fifteen healthy fetuses, eight girls and seven boys, underwent four additional 4-D scans at 24, 28, 32, and 36 weeks gestation. Changes in the frequency of touch for different facial regi…