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Title: Speaker Profile

Marie-Claire Busnel

After her doctoral research in biology and physiology in the USA, Marie-Claire Busnel's first contribution to science was a study in Accoustic Physiology on the effects of noise on the gestation of mice. Her results were so striking that she wondered whether they might be replicable in human mothers and foetuses.

Through the 80s she worked in the laboratory of genetics, neurogenetics and ethology at the Faculty of Medicine of Paris V.  There she was the first to demonstrate scienfically the existence of a foetal auditory system, a discovery that led to the wider recognition of the human foetus' ability to discriminate auditory stimuli. With her team, she produced evidence that foetuses are able to distinguish not only noises but also syllables, intonations, voices and pitches, and that moreover they were able to memorise sounds that they had heard previously.

Marie-Claire Busnel enjoys an international reputation among experts in foetal and infant physiology and development for this pioneering research; her progression from sound discrimination to the elucidation of the possible effects of mothers' emotions on their unborn babies has been remarkable within impeccable parameters of scientific experimental research.

Between 1983 and 1987, Marie-Claire Busnel acted as the President of the International Society of Ethology. She has published numerous papers. Her two books published in French are 'l' Aube des Sens' (Stock) 1981,1991; and 'Le Langage des Bebes, savons-nous l'entendre?' (Grancher) 1993. Now retired, Marie-Claire continues to work on her data, directing doctoral theses and contributing to international conferences and debates as a widely recognised and much loved experts' expert.



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The dawn of senses in foetal life: its implications for the mother-baby relationship
Monday 10 July
9.30 - 11.00am
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