Taste and Smell: Towards a better understanding of childhood development

August 20, 2009 From July 24th to 30th, the 8^th Pangborn Sensory Science Symposium, of which Vitagora was a partner, took place in Florence, Italy. Alongside the congress of the ECRO (European Chenoreception Research Organisation) and that of its American equivalent, Pangborn is one of the most important events in the area of sensory evaluation.

“If the ECRO and American congresses are essentially about basic research, the Pangborn Symposium is more oriented towards applications, and allows us, as researchers, to meet industry representatives,” explains Benoist Schaal, director of the European center for the sciences of taste (CESG) in Dijon, and who presented a plenary session during the Pangborn Symposium. His scientific conference was a summary of the latest results of his 30 year research into “maternal effects” – the genetic influence of mammal mothers, including humans, on the sensory, emotional and cognitive development of their offspring. “We are trying to understand how mothers transmitelements of information to their children that model and modulate their perceptive systems and their brain mechanisms,” he explains.

This research has shown in particular that, from the gestation period, the mother transmits information, mostly chemico-sensory in nature, to the child that “sculpts” his future olfactive and gustative capacities. “The child therefore already has memories of certain odors that are familiar to him and that he will then find in the postnatal environment, notably in breast milk.” The child’s brain continues this learning process, progressively adding new foods to a repertoire that determines his responses to environmental stimulations, especially food.

“Overall, we are working on the nerve and chemical bases of these two phenomena in order to find answers to the following questions: what information is transmitted by food? How is this information memorized and for what length of time? Is it a linear phenomenon during early childhood development or are there specific, so-called “sensitive” periods during which the brain absorbs more new information?”
 
Today, Benoist Schaal’s team is one of the few in the world, along with an American team at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, to work on this area. “This is demanding research. Public funding allows us to develop research that is not immediately transferable, even if the long-term potential is very promising for industry,” he indicates. Hence the increasing interest of the food industry for this area of science. Food manufacturers indeed seem to have gained an awareness that segments of life are not homogenous and that the perinatal period, the postnatal period and childhood are quite significant. “The wave of metabolic disorders or of diabetes observed since childhood in the past few years has only increased this awareness, and food manufacturers are becoming more involved in the ethics of their industry,” observes Benoist Schaal.

Contact
Benoist Schaal
Email : schaal@cesg.cnrs.fr

Source : Agence JFD and Co