Social visual stimuli increase infants suck response: A preliminary study.

Emily Zimmerman,Courtney Desousa,Wen-Jun Tu

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0207230

Abstract

This study investigated whether visual stimuli (FACES vs. CARS) combined with the presence of maternal scent can influence suck patterning in healthy infants. Fifteen healthy full-term infants (six months and younger) were exposed to their mother’s scent during a visual preference paradigm consisting of FACES vs. CARS stimuli while sucking on a custom research pacifier. Infants looked significantly longer to the FACES compared to CARS, p = .041. Repeated Measures ANOVA revealed a significant main effect for non-nutritive suck (NNS) bursts and visual stimuli (p = .001) with the largest differences evident between FACES and when the infant looked away from the visual stimuli (p = 0.008) as well as between FACES and CARS (p = 0.026). These preliminary findings suggest that infants have more suck attempts when looking at FACES in the presence of maternal scent thereby indicating potent links between visual preference and suck behavior.

Highlights

Infant suck patterning, or non-nutritive suck (NNS), is a highly patterned motor behavior that emerges soon after birth
Separate Repeated Measures ANOVA were completed on the NNS and visual preference data, see Fig 3
With a Bonferonni post-hoc adjustment, revealed a significant difference between the FACES versus the looking away from stimuli conditions (p = 0.008, 95% CI [.240, 1.628]) and between FACES and CARS (p = 0.026, 95% CI [.090, 1.553])

Summary

Introduction

Non-nutritive suck (NNS), is a highly patterned motor behavior that emerges soon after birth. NNS is controlled by the brainstem suck central pattern generator, or sCPG. The sCPG consists of neuronal networks localized in the brainstem reticular formation that control the activation of motor neurons responsible for new rhythmic motor patterns [2,3,4]. The sCPG is highly adaptable to descending cortical inputs as well as sensory inputs from the periphery and these signals are capable of modulating the output to lower motor neurons. Previous research has shown that sensory stimulation (e.g., touch, vestibular, olfactory) is capable of altering suck patterning in young infants [2, 5,6,7,8]

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