Abstract
Regular Mouthing Movements (RMMs) are movements in which lips and lower jaw movements occur regularly and can be observed in the fetus using transabdominal ultrasonic tomography. In near term infants, it is known that RMMs form clusters during the quiet sleep period. The notation of RMMs is not uniform, and is described as spontaneous sucking movement or non-nutritive sucking in newborns. Non-nutritive sucking is used to evaluate neurological function after birth, but there are no fetal indicators. The purpose of this study was to clarify the changes in the RMM clusters in fetuses at 24-39 weeks of gestation, and to investigate the relationship with the non-eye movement (NEM) period, which corresponds to the quiet sleep period after birth. Subjects included 83 normal single pregnancy cases. Fetal RMMs and eye movement (EM) were observed for 60 minutes using ultrasonic tomography and recorded as moving image files. We created time series data of eye movements and mouth movements from video recordings, and calculated RMM clusters per minute within effective observation time, RMM clusters per minute in EM period, RMM clusters per minute in NEM period, mouthing movements per cluster and ratio of number of RMM clusters per minute between NEM and EM periods and analyzed using linear regression analysis. As a result, critical points were detected in at two time points, at 32-33 weeks and 36-37 weeks of gestation, in RMM clusters per minute within the effective observation time and RMM clusters per minute in NEM period, respectively. RMM clusters in human fetuses increased from 32-33 to 36-37 weeks. This change is thought to represent fetal sleep development and central nervous system development.
Highlights
Regular Mouthing Movements (RMMs) are frequent movements of the lips and lower jaw and can be observed by imaging the fetal face using ultrasonic tomography [1]
We divided every minute, and the periods during which eye movements occurred were defined as EM periods, while those during which eye movements did not occur were defined as non-eye movement (NEM) period
This suggests that the changes in the occurrence of RMM clusters were related to the occurrence of RMM clusters synchronized to the NEM period
Summary
Regular Mouthing Movements (RMMs) are frequent movements of the lips and lower jaw and can be observed by imaging the fetal face using ultrasonic tomography [1]. In near-term infants, it is known that RMMs form clusters during quiet sleep [2,3,4]. Eye movements and regular mouthing movements (RMMs)
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