The behavioural process that takes place during a sensitive period in the early hours of life during which the baby's evolutionary biology enables it to orally fixate to a stimulus feature (normally the mother's nipple and the surrounding milking area) and learn its tactile characteristics 13

The use of certain key terms is made within this paper, and we believe that consistency in understanding these definitions will lead to improved infant care (Table 1). Articles were unrestricted regarding language, but only those written in English were included. Articles were qualitatively assessed for their relevance to вЂimprintingвЂ™, вЂlatchmentвЂ™ and вЂattachmentвЂ™ in the newborn. The behavioural observations that we see are consistent with the hypothesis of Merkel cell sensory nerve mechanotransduction supporting the learning mechanism of human imprinting 11, 12.ДЇor the purposes of this review, the literature was extensively and objectively researched using Google Scholar, Medline, PubMed and the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL). Merkel cells proliferate in the human foetus from the ninth gestational week and spread through a significant partВ of the buccal mucosa with an appropriately related neuronal coverage in the sensory cortex 10. Oral tactile recognition is achieved through Merkel cell mechanosensors. From birth through adolescence decoy, nonвЂђnutritive sucking of an unique object has been significantly correlated with jaw and dental problems in both first and permanent teeth 8, 9. Thumbsucking is the earliest and most common habit in children affecting as many as 45% of the young population in the world 8. The human baby deprived of the mother's breast has been observed to suck one digit or combination of digits out of ten to the exclusion of all others and become distressed if the imprinted decoy is physically denied 6. This hypothesis was supported by the finding that one teat preference was predominant across the mammalian spectrum with humans included 6, 7. Mobbs, in 1989, hypothesised that the human behavioural imprint was mediated by oral tactile sensory stimuli and was necessary for evolutionary survival 6. Human mammalian imprinting has previously been investigated, initially without discovery of a process 5. Such an understanding may assist in breastfeeding strategies and secondary nutritional and immunological newborn development. This study aims to review the process of mammalian imprinting, focusing on human term newborn behaviour, imprinting and latchment. Imprinting has been extensively studied in precocial birds such as geese, ducks and chickens 1, 2, 3, 4. The infant may awaken sometime after the postвЂђbirth sleep and find its decoy mother, commonly the selfвЂђthumb unless a dummy has already been introduced, while the real mother sleeps. Similar social reactions are readily released in the human infant by other than the genetically based biological object as we see with a decoy bottle teat/pacifier/dummy/thumb replacing the absent or deprived maternal nipple when the newborn has not been given the opportunity to orally imprint with the mother's breast during the stage of alertness following birth and preceding sleep. The recognition would occur at a sensitive time, usually near the day of hatching, and a following response would become established even when the sighting was an inanimate decoy. He found that the first threeвЂђdimensional representation of a moving sighting had by the newly hatched gosling, would be visually recognised as the mother. Lorenz was surprised that most precocious birds did not recognise their species through instinct. Imprinting is the term which was chosen by Konrad Lorenz in 1935 to describe the rapid visual acquisition of the ability of newly hatched goslings to recognise and socially bond to the mother for evolutionary survival 1.

Konrad lorenz imprinting