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A novel, short and easy-to-perform method to evaluate newborns’ social olfactory preferences

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Abstract

Humans’ early olfactory perception has been studied mainly within the framework of mother–offspring interactions and only a few studies have focused on newborns’ abilities to discriminate body odors per se. The aim of this study was to develop a method to evaluate olfactory social preferences of infants at term-equivalent age. Twenty dyads of infants (10 born preterm and 10 born at term) at term-equivalent age and their mothers were included. We analyzed the behavioral reactions of infants to their mother's upper-chest odor (that bears social, non-food related information). The two impregnated gauzes and a control gauze were presented to the infants for 10 s each, in a random order. We compared two durations of gauze impregnation: 30 min and 12 h. This study reveals that mothers’ upper chest emits sufficient olfactory information to induce reactions in infants born full-term or born preterm and that a short impregnation is preferable to evaluate their perception of body odors, notably for those born preterm.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the hospital staff and especially Dr A. de La Pintière, the nursing staff S. le Gall and I. Paire, the team members of the NIDCAP program S. Bleunven, I. Olivard, B. Kerleroux, N. Ratynski and the research nurse S. Roudaut, for their help during this research. We are also very grateful to all the participants, and their parents, for volunteering to be part of this study. We thank also Ann Cloarec for correcting the English. The study resulted from collaborations within the interdisciplinary Group of Scientific Interest GIS “Cerveau-Comportement-Société”.

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Rennes 1 and the CNRS and a doctoral fellowship from the French research ministry to V. André.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Univ Rennes, Normandie Univ, CNRS, EthoS (Éthologie animale et humaine) - UMR 6552, Rennes, France

    Vanessa André, Séverine Henry, Adelyne Vuillemin, Alban Lemasson, Martine Hausberger & Virginie Durier

  2. Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Rennes, Unité de Réanimation Néonatale et Pédiatrique, Rennes, France

    Alain Beuchée

  3. Laboratoire Traitement du Signal et de l’Image, Univ Rennes, Laboratoire Traitement du Signal et de l’Image, Rennes, France

    Alain Beuchée

  4. Centre Hospitalier Régional Universitaire, Pôle de la Femme, de la Mère et de l’Enfant, Brest, France

    Jacques Sizun & Jean-Michel Roué

  5. Université de Bretagne Occidentale, Laboratoire de Neurosciences de Brest, Faculté de Médecine et des Sciences de la Santé, Brest, France

    Jacques Sizun, Jean-Michel Roué & Laurent Misery

  6. Centre Hospitalier Régional Universitaire Brest, Département de Dermatologie, Brest, France

    Laurent Misery

Authors
  1. Vanessa André
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Correspondence to Virginie Durier.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from the parents of all individual participants included in the study.

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André, V., Henry, S., Vuillemin, A. et al. A novel, short and easy-to-perform method to evaluate newborns’ social olfactory preferences. Anim Cogn 23, 843–850 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-020-01397-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-020-01397-w

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