Are babies able to taste?

[MRC_Hans]

The neonatal nurse may have been partly right and partly wrong.

I'll bet what the deal is is that while the necessary sensory equipment comes on line right away, a baby's developing brain may not know what to do with much of the information collected because the associated connections are mostly wired up on the fly. Some of the outputs do go directly to the amygdala, which makes it possible for smells (most 'tastes' are smells) to trigger emotions directly. This makes me wonder how much is hardwired.

[humorous contribution]Some people never develop any taste.[/humor]

Mmm, that makes sense. It is also very obvious that while our eyes are functional right from birth, it takes some weeks for an infant to actually learn to use them.

In the same way, it might be that small babies do receive sensory input from their tastebuds, but they have limited ability to process the information.

After all, what tastes good or bad is very much a question of conditioning. Often a very individual thing.

Hans