Abstract
Human newborns use odor cues to orient to their source of nutrition. However, tube-fed, premature infants have restricted chemosensory experience. New methods of introducing breast milk odor to tube-fed premature infants will permit empiric tests of the effect of controlled exposure to nutrient odor. We therefore developed an infant olfactometer and piloted its use in 7 tube-fed, premature infants in the neonatal intensive care unit. Since nonnutritive sucking shortens the amount of time required to wean from tube-feeding, we tested the effect of breast milk odor on nonnutritive sucking. Six out of 7 subjects responded to breast milk odor with an increase in number of sucks. Statistical analysis supported the hypothesis that breast milk odor reinforces nonnutritive sucking. These results indicate the feasibility and potential of this experimental approach, and warrant further study of the effect of controlled nutrient odor exposure on feeding behavior of premature infants.
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This study was supported by Grant R01 NR010166 from the National Institute for Nursing Research, by a grant from the Fletcher Allen Health Care Research Development Foundation, and by the Department of Neurology, Fletcher Allen Health Care. The authors gratefully acknowledge the families of infants who participated in this study. Gary Wysocki and Paul Wise provided advice on the design of the infant olfactometer, and James Fox provided Labview programming expertise. We thank Doug Gomez and the University of Vermont’s Instrument and Modeling Facility for help with construction of the olfactometer. We thank Debbie Stevens-Tuttle and nurses of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Fletcher Allen Health Care for carrying out NICU observations. The first author holds a patent for a device (osmophore pacifier) described in this article.
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Bingham, P.M., Churchill, D. & Ashikaga, T. Breast milk odor via olfactometer for tube-fed, premature infants. Behavior Research Methods 39, 630–634 (2007). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193035
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193035
