ArticlePilot and feasibility studies2016
Do fetuses move their lips to the sound that they hear? An observational feasibility study on auditory stimulation in the womb.
Article in Pilot and feasibility studies, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 19 citations in OpenAlex.
- Trial
- Self-vocalizations activate the developing auditory cortex via an intracortical pathway.Science advances · 2026Article
- Can We Talk About Fetal Consciousness?Acta paediatrica (Oslo, Norway : 1992) · 2026Review
- Do Human Fetuses Form Long-Lasting Chemosensory Memories? Longitudinal Follow-Up From Fetus to Young Child of Facial Responses to Flavor/Odor Stimuli.Developmental psychobiology · 2026Article
- Human brain R2* transitions across birth from the womb to early infancy.Communications biology · 2025Article
- How did vocal communication come to dominate human language? A view from the womb.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Perinatal Imaging in Partnership with Families (PIPKIN): Longitudinal cohort study protocol.PloS one · 2025Article
- Trajectories of brain and behaviour development in the womb, at birth and through infancy.Nature human behaviour · 2024Review
- Prenatal effects of maternal nutritional stress and mental health on the fetal movement profile.Archives of gynecology and obstetrics · 2020Article
- Guidelines for reporting non-randomised pilot and feasibility studies.Pilot and feasibility studies · 2019Article
- Fetal Origin of Sensorimotor Behavior.Frontiers in neurorobotics · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundWe investigate in this feasibility study whether specific lip movements increase prenatally when hearing a particular sound. We hypothesised that fetuses would produce more mouth movements resembling those required to make the sound stimulus they heard (i.e. mouth stretch) compared with a no-sound control group who heard no specific auditory stimuli. Secondly, we predicted that fetuses hearing the sound would produce a similar number of mouth movements unrelated to the sound heard (i.e. lip pucker) as the no-sound group of fetuses.
methodsIn an observational feasibility study, 17 fetuses were scanned twice at 32 and 36 weeks of gestation, and two different types of mouth movements were recorded. Three fetuses received an auditory stimulus, and 14 did not. A generalised mixed effects log-linear model was used to determine statistical significance.
resultsFetuses in the sound group performed one specific mouth movement (mouth stretch) significantly more frequently than fetuses in the no-sound group. A significant interaction between group and gestational age indicates that there was differential change in this specific movement as age increases (
conclusionsThese results suggest that a sound stimulus is associated with an increase in specific, rather than general, mouth movements. The results are informative for the development of infant speech and potentially could also lead to a diagnostic test for deafness in utero. More research is needed to replicate this research with a randomised design and with a range of different auditory stimuli which would be produced with different mouth movements, such as "o" which would be seen as pursed lips.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.