Researchers conducted a study and found that infants whose mothers were assigned to drink carrot juice during their pregnancy preferred baby cereal flavoured with carrot juice compared to cereal flavoured with water. Infants of mothers not assigned to drink carrot juice showed no preference. Given what we know about the development of prenatal senses:
Anatomy and Physiology of Special Sensory Organs
Sensory organs can be labeled as special sensory structures that permit sight, hearing, odor, and flavor. Sensory structures permitting proprioception, touch, thermal, and pain perception can be classified as more advanced sensory organs. The sensory neurons are trained to find out modifications in the external and internal conditions so that a person's body can react to that change. A stimulus is the first signal that is recognized by any sensory receptor of the body. Stimulus is an impulse generated when there is a change in the surroundings of a person. For example, a heated environment will alert the brain through the thermal sensory organs and generate a reflex accordingly.
Sensory Receptors
The human sensory system is one of the most complex and highly evolved structures, which processes a myriad of incoming messages. This well-coordinated system helps an organism or individual to respond to external stimuli, appropriately. The sensory receptors are an important part of the sensory system. These receptors are specialized epidermal cells that respond to external environmental stimuli. These receptors consist of structural and support cells that form the peripheral unit of the receptor and the neural dendrites which receive and detect the external stimuli.
Researchers conducted a study and found that infants whose mothers were assigned to drink carrot juice during their pregnancy preferred baby cereal flavoured with carrot juice compared to cereal flavoured with water. Infants of mothers not assigned to drink carrot juice showed no preference. Given what we know about the development of prenatal senses:
A) It is likely that the infants who developed a preference for carrot juice did so after they were born (i.e., through experiencing the flavours in breastmilk) because prenatal taste development is not advanced enough to distinguish flavours
B) It is likely that the infants who developed a preference for carrot juice did so after they were born (i.e., through experiencing the flavours in breastmilk) because flavours from foods the mother eats cannot be transmitted to the fetus
C) Infants naturally prefer sweet flavours, which is why these infants preferred the carrot-flavoured cereal.
D) It is likely that the infants who developed a preference for carrot juice did so because they experienced that flavour prenatally
Many experiments in past few decades have demonstrated that infants ability to sense stimuli such as taste, smells, speech and other development starts before birth that is when they are fetus.
Some of the experiments have also demonstrated that flavours from mother diet consumed during pregnancy gets transmitted to amniotic fluid and reach to fetus (Prenatal and postnatal flavor learning by human infants, J A Mennella et al. Pediatrics. 2001 Jun). As a result, infants experience the tastes and flavours of food eaten by their mother during pregnancy before their first experience to solid foods. Same flavours are also experienced by infants from the breask milk which includes flavours from diet of their mother during pregnancy.
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