Babies develop facial expressions in womb: Study

Washington, Sep 8 - Babies develop facial expressions such as parting lips, wrinkling a nose or lowering a brow much before they are born, a new study has shown.

  

And as the foetus grows, these facial motions become increasingly complex, found the study by researchers at the University of Durham in the UK.

 While it was known that foetuses could form expressions while in the womb, this new study tracked facial movements over time, LiveScience reported.

 By capturing images of two foetuses periodically from 24 to about 35 weeks of gestation, the Durham team watched individual, unrelated movements progress to complex combinations, associated with recognisable facial expressions.

 ÒWhat we have found for the first time is you can look at the progression of the complexity of the movements,Ó lead study author Nadja Reissland said.

 In addition to tracking 19 total facial movements, the researchers focused on sets of movements associated with two expressions, one associated with crying, the other laughing.

Over time, the movements associated with these began to appear in more complex combinations.

 For the study, appeared in the journal PLoS ONE, the researchers used 4-D ultrasound images, which resemble video, to track the facial motions of two female foetuses.

 At 24 weeks, foetuses were more likely to make a single movement, like a widening of the lips for example, all by itself. Then, as the weeks passed, they began combining the movements, putting, say, a lip widening movement with a nose wrinkle.

 By about 35 weeks, combinations of three and four movements associated with the two expressions had surpassed single or double movements. A similar trend occurred when the researchers looked at all 19 movements.

Reissland pointed out that these facial movements don't mean the foetuses were experiencing emotion.

 ÒWe can see the expressions which we can recognise; we can't say whether the foetus has emotion,Ó she said. ÒThey (don't) have yet the cognition necessary to have the emotions.Ó Rather, these motions are likely a form of practice, as the foetuses prepare to enter the social world, where they must form bonds with others, she said.

 Foetuses also suck their thumbs in the womb and make breathing motions, both precursors for important activities once they are born, she added.

 The researchers are now planning to look for other foetal facial expressions associated with anger, smiling and sadness.

Indians, Europeans share a milky past

London, Sept 8 - In a major study, researchers in the UK have discovered that lactose tolerant milk-drinkers in India and Europe could be related to the same person who lived at some point in the last 10,000 years.

 The Cambridge University team, in association with fellow researchers at CCMB Hyderabad, UCL, University of Tartu, Harvard and University of Chennai, were studying genetic changes that allow some 32 per cent of the world's population to be lactase persistent able to digest lactose, the sugar in milk. To their surprise they found the same mutation, with the same origin, at high frequency in Europe and India.

 The focus of the Cambridge-led study was India the world's largest producers and consumers of milk.

 The team's study may also help scientists' understanding of evolutionary processes such as biological adaptation and how culture and economic developments affect human biology.

 Its authors say the study has shown that with a little kick from natural selection, genes can spread far, wide and fast, a university release said.

 Lactase persistence is common in Europe, the Middle East and some parts of Africa and India areas where domesticated cattle are widespread - but either rare or absent in most other parts of the world.

 When someone who is not lactase persistent drinks milk they will often suffer symptoms such as abdominal pain, bloating, nausea and diarrhoea otherwise known as lactose intolerance.

 While all babies produce the gut enzyme lactase, essential for the digestion of lactose in milk, the production of the enzyme is usually shut down some time before adulthood.

 Although once thought of as normal, lactase persistence was found in the 1960s to be an unusual trait in humans and seems to be completely absent from other mammals whose lactase production diminishes significantly after being weaned and is never resumed.

 The team looked at nearly 2,300 DNA samples from across the Indian subcontinent from all major language groups and geographic regions the first study of its kind.

 Previous studies had shown that lactase persistence had evolved at least four times in the last 10,000 years, independently in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

 However, little was known about its genetic causes in India, until now.

 Cambridge's Irene Gallego Romero, the lead author, said: ÒIndia was an unknown quantity. But since lactase persistence had evolved independently in the Middle East and Africa, and because cattle had been domesticated independently in India around seven or eight thousand years ago, we were expecting to see uniquely Indian genetic causes.