MODEL FOR SENSITIVE PERIODS IN EARLY FLAVOR LEARNING

描述（由申请人提供）：人类的口味和食物偏好在生命早期建立，一直持续到童年和青春期，这一发现对长期健康具有重要意义。然而，这种偏好是如何形成的仍然是一个谜。我们的研究计划的主要目标是了解风味和食物偏好如何发展，并与经验进行修改。为此，我们调查了最早的风味经验，那些发生在子宫内和母乳喂养期间，并证明这些经验影响婴儿的接受各种口味和食物，包括蔬菜。最近，我们利用商业婴儿配方奶粉之间的显著风味差异作为模型来研究配方奶粉喂养的婴儿早期经历的影响。对基于蛋白质水解物的配方的接受度的急剧发展变化以及发现早期暴露导致对该配方的风味的享乐基调从绝对厌恶到渴望接受的完全转变，使其成为强大的实验工具。早期接触的影响特别持久，导致孩子在最后一次接触后几年改变了偏好。这些研究的结果为拟议的关于确定风味和食物偏好的敏感期（“风味印记”）的调查奠定了基础。为了最大限度地发挥这项研究的价值，大多数拟议的研究都是在同一批婴儿中进行的。这些婴儿将在他们生命的前三年进行研究，我们认为这一时期对于建立长期的风味和食物接受模式至关重要。这项新颖的多学科研究计划的结果将对理解人类婴儿的感官引导反应和食物选择生物学具有理论和实践意义。他们还将提供有关战略的信息，以克服在向临床上需要的婴儿引入水解物配方奶粉时遇到的困难。参与每一项拟议研究的儿童将对最近发现的味觉受体基因进行基因分型，以确定遗传差异如何促进食物偏好的发展。关于儿童食物偏好形成的机制和食物好恶的分子基础的新知识，这一代人将与肥胖和糖尿病作斗争，可能会提出克服饮食引起的疾病的策略。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Human flavor and food preferences established early in life track into childhood and adolescence, a finding with important implications for long-term health. How such preferences develop remains a mystery, however. The primary goal of our research program is to understand how flavor and food preferences develop and are modified with experience. To this end, we investigated the very earliest flavor experiences, those which occur in utero and during breastfeeding, and demonstrated that these experiences influence the infant's acceptance of a variety of flavors and foods including vegetables. More recently, we have taken advantage of the marked flavor differences among commercial infant formulas as a model to study the effects of early experiences in infants who are formula fed. The drastic developmental changes in acceptance of formulas which are protein hydrolysate based and the finding that early exposure results in a complete shift in hedonic tone to the flavor of this formula from one of absolute distaste to eager acceptance, make it a powerful experimental tool. The effects of early exposure were particularly persistent, leading to altered preferences several years after the child's last exposure. The findings from these studies set the stage for the proposed investigation on sensitive periods in determining flavor and food preferences ("flavor imprinting"). To maximize the value of this research, most of the proposed studies are conducted with the same cohort of infants. These infants will be studied across their first three years of life, a period we believe is crucial to the establishment of long-term patterns of flavor and food acceptance. The results of this novel, multidisciplinary research program will have both theoretical and practical implications for understanding the sensory-guided responses of human infants and the biology of food choice. They will also provide information on strategies to overcome the difficulties in introducing hydrolysate formulas to infants who need them clinically. Children participating in each of the proposed studies will be genotyped for recently discovered taste receptor genes to determine how genetic differences contribute to the development of food preferences. New knowledge about the mechanisms underlying the formation of food preferences and the molecular basis of food likes and dislikes in children, a generation who will struggle with obesity and diabetes, may suggest strategies to overcome diet-induced diseases.