Yomiuri: Smile of unborn baby photographed
A picture of a smiling baby in the womb has been photographed--reportedly for the first time ever--by a research team led by Prof. Kiyobumi Kawakami of Sacred Heart University in Tokyo. The team used ultrasonography to take pictures of smiling unborn babies. The photos have been officially acknowledged as indicating spontaneous smiles on unborn babies' faces for the first time under internationally accepted scientific standards, the team said. The youngest baby pictured by the team was 23 weeks and 1 day old. In cooperation with Dr. Takumi Yanaihara, who runs an obstetrics and gynecology clinic in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, the team filmed the baby for three minutes, during which time the baby smiled six times, for 4.7 seconds each time on average. Spontaneous smiling is different from social smiling, which people do in response to another's smile, for example. A spontaneous smile is defined as the facial expression that occurs when the corner of a person's mouth lifts up for at least a second. It has been confirmed that newborn chimpanzees and Japanese macaques bore their teeth in an appearance of smiling, but such behavior by an unborn baby had never been pictured before.
