Introduction to Life Before Birth

Through many windows of observation, we can now see--for the first time in human history--what is actually happening in the womb. There is good news and bad news. We can no longer think that the placenta can protect the prenate from anything bad going on in the mother's body, or that the mother's body can protect the prenate from bad things going on in her world. Mother and baby face together the perils of air, water, and earth compromised by the toxic residues of modern chemistry and physics. Parents are perhaps the last ones to learn (and their children the first ones to suffer) these tragic realities of modern life. Pollution has many sources, beginning with the physical environment surrounding the mother and father. Numerous chemicals loose in the environment reach them where they work or find them in the garage or in cleaning supplies in the kitchen. Solvents, metals, pesticides, preservatives, fumes, and various forms of radiation are capable of interfering with reproduction. Chemical pollution also reaches us in the medical system through prescribed drugs which may put the well-being of the prenate at risk. Some medicines, like aspirin are hazardous at birth, as are some powerful anesthetics. Not long ago, an antibacterial soap used widely in hospitals and dispensed in public areas was discovered--after years of use--to be neurotoxic. Parents, too, can be a source of contamination and injury to the unborn baby as a consequence of their personal habits and lifestyle choices. Drugs thought to be harmless to adults can be harmful to babies because they are not able to handle these chemicals in adult doses. Nicotine, caffein, and aspirin, substances ubiquitous in adult life, can affect the course of growth and development of babies. The damaging effects of alcohol have been known for centuries and the most recent research (2005) warns that no level of alcohol in the pregnant mother is safe. Not so well known, and perhaps not yet even tested, are the toxic effects of experimental “street drugs” which damage parents as well as babies. All these discoveries are revealing the profound importance of very early parenting, beginning, not at the time of birth, but even before the time of conception when it is still possible to avoid a host of serious problems. An additional reason for parents to begin active parenting at conception is the discovery that babies in the womb are also developing more rapidly than previously thought possible. From the second month of pregnancy, experiments and observations reveal an active prenate with a rapidly developing sensory system permitting exquisite sensitivity and responsiveness. Long before the development of advanced brain structures, prenates are seen interacting with each other and learning from experience. They seem especially interested in the larger environment provided by mother and father, and react to individual voices, stories, music, and even simple interaction games with parents. The quality of the uterine environment is determined principally by parents. The opportunities for parents to form a relationship with the baby in the womb are significant and remarkable. This contrasts sharply with the previous view that prenates did not have the capacity to interact, remember, learn, or put meaning to their experiences. Only a decade ago, doctors typically told pregnant mothers and fathers that talking to a baby in the womb was useless and unrealistic. Now there is mounting evidence for memory and learning in utero and for precocious communication before the stage of language. These abilities of unborn babies underlie the successes reported in a series of scientific experiments with prenatal stimulation and bonding. They are also a basis for the personal stories occasionally shared by children and adults about their experiences before birth.

Author(s): David Chamberlin

Disclaimer
The sole purpose of these blogs is to provide information about the tradition of ayurveda. This information is not intended for use in the diagnosis, prevention or cure of any disease. If you have any serious, acute or chronic health concern, please consult a trained doctor/health professional who can fully assess your needs and address them effectively. If you are seeking the medical advice of a trained Ayurvedic expert, call us or e mail.
Dr Unnati Chavda
(Promoting pregnancy wellness)
www.ayurvedapanchkarma.in

The Importance of Fetal Behavior : Research

The Importance of Fetal Behavior

The fetus is continually active in and reactive to its environment. But why does the fetus move, sense its environment, learn? It is possible that the behavior and experiences of the fetus have no impact on its development and are mere byproducts of the maturation process. However, research suggests the behaviour of the fetus is important for its development both before and after birth (Hepper, 1996), ensuring its survival and beginning its integration into the social world. Adapting to the womb - The fetal environment is very different from that experienced after birth. In order to survive in this environment the fetus may exhibit behaviors suited to this environment – ontogenetic adaptations (Oppenheim, 1984). To date, there has been little research examining this aspect of the fetus’s behaviour. It may be that some of the reflexes exhibited by the newborn are required by the fetus to aid its movement during birth. Practice makes perfect - One key role for prenatal activity is to practise behaviours that are essential for survival after birth; for example, fetal breathing movements. These begin at 9–10 weeks and occur around 30 per cent of the time at 30 weeks (Patrick et al., 1980). Although there is no air in the womb these breathing movements help the neural pathways responsible for breathing to mature, ensuring a fully operational system when required at the moment of birth. Forming joints and muscles - The movements of the fetus are essential for the formation of the joints and muscle tone (Drachman & Sokoloff, 1966). Initially, the joints develop with rough surfaces; but as the fetus moves, the joints are reshaped and develop their smooth surfaces to enable complete mobility. Absence of movement in joints has been linked to malformation, (e.g. club foot). Getting ready for the breast - Prenatal olfactory learning may facilitate the establishment of breast-feeding. Although alternatives exist to breastfeeding today, in the evolution of the mother/fetus/newborn biological system alternatives to breast-feeding were not available. If the individual was to survive its only source of nourishment in the immediate postnatal period was breast milk. The same processes that flavor the mother’s breast milk also flavour the amniotic fluid, so the fetus may learn about the flavor of breast milk from swallowing amniotic fluid. Mothers whose diet changes across the birth period have much more difficulty in establishing breast-feeding than mothers whose diet remains the same. Attachment - The ability of the fetus to recognize its mother’s voice and smell may be important for the processes of attachment and exploration. While the newborn has a rudimentary sensory system able to process auditory and chemosensory information, and to a lesser extent visual information, it knows nothing about its environment. Imagine yourself with sensory systems able to process information but in which nothing is familiar – disorientation indeed. It would make good sense for the newborn to be able to recognise one familiar object in this sensory milieu, and even better sense if this object is its mother and primary caregiver. Recognition by sound and smell are also advantageous as they operate remotely; that is, the mother may be out of visual contact with her baby but the baby can hear and smell her over some distance, providing a familiar recognizable cue in the newborn’s environment. Language - Experience with speech sounds in the womb may begin the process of language acquisition (Moon & Fifer, 2000). Newborns recognize and prefer their mother’s language, and are able to discriminate this from an unfamiliar language (Moon et al., 1993). Recordings from the womb reveal that speech sounds clearly emerge from the background noise (Querleu et al., 1988). This exposure may be the beginning of language acquisition. Boosting brain cells - At a more general level, experience during the prenatal period may be important, or even essential, for normal development, especially of the brain. It is well established that the nervous system develops in response to the experiences it receives and from activity generated within the system (Lagercrantz & Ringstedt, 2001). The prenatal period marks the most rapid period of development of our brain. At its peak some 250,000 brain cells are being produced every minute. The normal prenatal environment (of changing sensory information, fetal activity and reactivity) may provide necessary and essential stimulation for the formation of the CNS and subsequently its function.

Disclaimer
The sole purpose of these blogs is to provide information about the tradition of ayurveda. This information is not intended for use in the diagnosis, prevention or cure of any disease. If you have any serious, acute or chronic health concern, please consult a trained doctor/health professional who can fully assess your needs and address them effectively. If you are seeking the medical advice of a trained Ayurvedic expert, call us or e mail.
Dr Unnati Chavda
(Promoting pregnancy wellness)
www.ayurvedapanchkarma.in

 

Babies Learn Music and Language in the Womb! Research

As I have written previously, several lines of scientific evidence point to the fact that even while they are in the womb, babies are fully human. Far from being a “mass of flesh” that hasn’t reached the status of personhood, a baby in the womb has all the genetic characteristics of a human being as well as some of the social and mental characteristics of a human being. Three new studies demonstrate that they also have some communication characteristics of a human being.

In one study, for example, 12 pregnant women played a CD loudly five times each week during the last trimester of their pregnancy. It contained excerpts from several different melodies, and there was talking in between the excerpts. However, the important melody on the CD was “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” which was repeated 3 times. The babies developing in these mothers’ wombs heard this melody 138 to 192 times before they were born. The mothers then destroyed the CD once their child was born, so that there was no chance the baby could hear the contents of the CD afterwards.

Shortly after birth and again at the ripe old age of 4 months, the babies were played a modified version the “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” melody nine times. In this modified version, 12.5% of the notes from the original melody were randomly changed to a single note – “B.” While the modified melody was playing, an EEG recorded the electrical activity in each baby’s brain. The researchers also chose 12 babies whose mothers had not been given the CD and did the same thing to them. The babies who had heard the CD in the womb had significantly higher electrical brain activity when the modified notes were played, indicating that these notes were unfamiliar to them. For the babies whose mothers had not been given the CD, the electrical activity in the brain was the same during both the original notes and the changed notes.¹ This gives strong evidence that babies can learn the music they hear while they are in the womb.

Of course, one could argue that animals respond to music, so perhaps this is not a uniquely human trait. However, our means of communication is unique to humans, and even in the womb, babies are already starting to learn how to talk. For example, Christine Moon and her colleagues studied 80 babies who were 7-75 hours old. Half of the babies were from the U.S., and the other half were from Sweden. They gave each baby a pacifier that controlled an audio presentation. When the baby sucked on the pacifier, vowel sounds would be played. Some of the vowel sounds were from their native tongue, and some were from a foreign language. They found that the babies sucked on the pacifier more when a foreign vowel sound was played. This indicated that the babies were much more familiar with the native vowel sounds, and they recognized the foreign vowel sounds as being different.

Interestingly enough, the babies who were tested just 7 hours after birth performed essentially the same as the babies that were tested 75 hours after birth. This indicates that the babies’ responses had nothing to do with what they had heard since birth. Thus, the authors conclude that the babies were more familiar with the vowel sounds they had heard while they were in the womb. The authors state.

Of course, the level of learning is yet to be determined. However, the fact that a baby in the womb is learning language (even at a very rudimentary level) indicates that it is fully human.

Not only do babies recognize vowel sounds that they hear while in the womb, they also recognize words they hear – even when a word has been made up! The same researcher who did first study I discussed also headed up a study in which 17 pregnant Finnish women were instructed to play a recording of a made-up word (tatata) loudly 5-7 times a week during their third trimester of pregnancy. The recording said the word over and over again in two bursts of four minutes each. Most of the time, the word was pronounced exactly the same, but every once in a while, it would be pronounced slightly differently.

An average of five days after each baby was born, he or she heard the same recording, and an EEG measured the electrical activity in the baby’s brain. The electrical activity shot up when the baby heard the odd pronunciation of the word, indicating that the baby knew this was different from the standard pronunciation. The researchers did the same thing with 16 babies whose mothers had not played the recordings at all, and the babies registered no spike in electrical activity when the word was pronounced oddly. This indicates that the babies who heard the made-up word in the womb remembered it.³

So not only do babies learn melodies in the womb, they learn the basics of speech and learn to recognize certain words. When you combine this with the genetic evidence, the social interaction evidence, and the brain-development evidence, it is clear that even in the womb, babies are fully human.

REFERENCES

1. Eino Partanen, Teija Kujala, Mari Tervaniemi, and Minna Huotilainen, “Prenatal Music Exposure Induces Long-Term Neural Effects,” PLoS ONE, DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0078946, 2013

2. Christine Moon, Hugo Lagercrantz, and Patricia K Kuhl, “Language experienced in utero affects vowel perception after birth: a two-country study,” Acta Paediatricia, 102(2):156-160, 2013

3. Eino Partanen, Teija Kujala, Risto Näätänen, Auli Liitola, Anke Sambeth, and Minna Huotilainen, “Learning-induced neural plasticity of speech processing before birth,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, doi:10.1073/pnas.1302159110, 2013

Disclaimer
The sole purpose of these blogs is to provide information about the tradition of ayurveda. This information is not intended for use in the diagnosis, prevention or cure of any disease. If you have any serious, acute or chronic health concern, please consult a trained doctor/health professional who can fully assess your needs and address them effectively. If you are seeking the medical advice of a trained Ayurvedic expert, call us or e mail.

Dr Unnati Chavda
(Promoting pregnancy wellness)
www.ayurvedapanchkarma.in

Babies Learn Music and Language in the Womb! Research VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Bacteria in Breast Milk? Yes! Research

The breast milk that a mother feeds her baby is laden with bacteria. Does that sound bad? It shouldn’t! While there are some pathogenic bacteria, most bacteria are incredibly beneficial to the life that exists on this planet. That’s especially true of bacteria that live in and on people. It turns out that most people live in a relationship with more than 150 different species of bacteria, and the individual bacteria that participate in this relationship far outnumber the human cells that make up a person’s body. In one sense, then, a person is not an individual. Instead, he or she is a walking ecosystem!

Scientists now call the collection of bacteria that lives in a person’s body the microbiome, and as the article linked above indicates, each person seems to have his or her own special mix of bacteria in that microbiome. Indeed, some researchers think that analyzing the DNA of the bacteria a criminal leaves behind can aid in identifying that criminal in cases where his or her own DNA is not available at the crime scene or too degraded to analyze properly.¹

So where does an infant start collecting the bacteria that will make up his or her own microbiome? One of the sources is the breast milk that the infant drinks. It has been known for quite some time that breast milk contains bacteria, but the details have not been well studied. However, a group of Spanish researchers have begun to shed some light on those details. They studied the breast milk of 18 mothers who varied in weight, weight gain during pregnancy, and the mode in which the baby was delivered. They sampled the milk these mothers produced at three different times: the first secretions of milk produced after giving birth (called colostrum), the milk that was produced one month after giving birth, and the milk that was produced six months after giving birth. They sequenced the DNA of the bacteria found in these samples of milk, and they came up with some amazing results.²

First, they showed that the diversity of bacteria found in the breast milk was significantly higher than previously thought. In some of the samples they studied, they found the DNA of seven hundred different species of bacteria! However, they found that this mix of bacterial species did not stay constant over time. Instead, the colostrum was rich in intestinal bacteria from generas such as Weissella and Lactococcus, while the milk produced one and six months after delivery had higher concentrations of oral bacteria such as those from the genus Veillonella. The researchers note that it is possible the increase in these oral bacteria is a result of the baby contributing bacteria to the mother’s breast, so it is not clear whether this is a designed change to optimize the health of the baby or simply a result of the breastfeeding process.

Second, they found that the mothers who were obese had a significantly lower diversity of bacteria in their milk as compared to the milk of the mothers who were not obese. Now, of course, the number of women in this study is rather small, so it’s not clear how significant this comparison is. If further studies demonstrate that this correlation is real, it might indicate that obese mothers are not giving their children an ideal mix of bacteria when they are infants. It’s even possible that the lower diversity of bacteria that the infants receive predisposes them to weight gain later in life.

Third, they found that the breast milk produced by mothers who underwent planned Caesarian section deliveries was significantly different from the milk produced by the mothers who went through a vaginal delivery. Like the obese mothers, those who went through planned Caesarian section deliveries produced milk that had a significantly lower diversity of bacterial species. However, if the mother went through an unplanned Caesarian section delivery, the diversity of bacteria in her milk was much more similar to the mothers who went through vaginal deliveries!

Once again, the small number of mothers in the study means we must view this result with some skepticism, but let’s suppose the observed differences are confirmed in other studies. How can we explain that the Caesarian section delivery must be planned in order to result in a lower diversity of bacteria in the mother’s milk? The authors suggest that hormonal responses which are specific to the labor process play a role in determining the bacterial content of the mother’s breast milk. Thus, the key is not necessarily the delivery method, but the way in which the mothers experience the labor process.

Obviously, this small study has opened up a whole new area of research when it comes to infants and their development. As time goes on, I expect that more research will reveal that the mix of bacteria in a mother’s breast milk is very important in the healthy development of her baby. As a creationist, this doesn’t surprise me at all. I have stated previously that creationists have proposed that microorganisms (and even viruses) were initially created as a link between macroorganisms (like people) and the chemical richness of their surroundings. It’s not surprising, then, that babies are introduced to a wide diversity of these useful organisms shortly after they emerge from the womb.

REFERENCES

1. Kennedy DM, Stanton J-AL, García JA, Mason C, Rand CJ, et al., “Microbial Analysis of Bite Marks by Sequence Comparison of Streptococcal DNA,” PLoS ONE 7(12):e51757 doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0051757, 2012

2. Cabrera-Rubio R, Collado MC, Laitinen K, Salminen S, Isolauri E, and Mira A., “The human milk microbiome changes over lactation and is shaped by maternal weight and mode of delivery,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 96(3):544-51, 2012

In the end, then, breast milk doesn’t just give a baby the bacteria he or she needs. It also includes nutrition that can be used only by those bacteria, so as to encourage them to stay with the baby! Indeed, this was recently demonstrated in a study in which the authors spiked either infant formula or bottled breast milk with two strains of beneficial bacteria. After observing the premature babies who received the concoctions for several weeks, they found that the ones who had been feed bacteria-spiked formula did not have nearly as many of the beneficial microbes in their intestines as those who had been feed bacteria-spiked breast milk.

Disclaimer
The sole purpose of these blogs is to provide information about the tradition of ayurveda. This information is not intended for use in the diagnosis, prevention or cure of any disease. If you have any serious, acute or chronic health concern, please consult a trained doctor/health professional who can fully assess your needs and address them effectively. If you are seeking the medical advice of a trained Ayurvedic expert, call us or e mail.

Dr Unnati Chavda
(Promoting pregnancy wellness)
www.ayurvedapanchkarma.in

 

WHY DO NEWBORN BABIES SMELL SO GOOD?: RESEARCH

There’s something intoxicating about the milky smell of a newborn. Many mothers admit to spending hours inhaling their baby’s odour.

And for good reason — several studies have shown that women can pick out the scent of their baby from other newborns just a few days after giving birth. 

Parents may also be able to detect a similarity between their baby’s smell and that of other close family members. 

We don’t know precisely where these  olfactory signals come from, but scientists think it may be the baby’s sebaceous glands — the tiny oil producers which tend to be particularly active in newborn babies, especially on the head and face. 

Body odour is influenced by what we eat, so breast-feeding may also contribute to that delicious new-baby smell. 

CAN YOUR UNBORN BABY TASTE YOUR SPICY TAKEAWAY?

Many women believe eating curry in late pregnancy will bring on labour. The taste buds on a baby’s tongue begin to develop 13 to 15 weeks into pregnancy, enabling him or her to detect simple tastes such as sweet, sour and salty in the womb. 

Smells and flavours from a mother’s food get into the amniotic fluid surrounding the baby during the third trimester, and as a foetus breathes and swallows around a litre of this a day, which then passes over smell and taste receptors in the nose and mouth, unborn babies do get a taste of what their mum is eating. 

CAN YOU TRAIN YOUR UNBORN BABY TO HAVE HEALTHY EATING HABITS IN LATER LIFE?

It seems that the memory of tastes experienced in the womb influences the foods babies like in later life. 

Studies have shown that if Mum drinks a glass of carrot juice four times a week in the last trimester (or the first two months of breastfeeding) her baby will find cereal prepared with carrot juice appealing once weaned.

Babies whose mothers eat a lot of fruit during pregnancy are also more likely to enjoy fruit during weaning. 

Trying to eat as many different flavours as possible should, therefore, expose your unborn or breastfeeding baby to different tastes and, in theory make them less prone to fussy eating. 

CAN A BABY DETECT ITS MOTHER'S MOOD IN THE WOMB?

How a mother feels during pregnancy can certainly affect her unborn baby’s movements. 

In a study at Japan’s Nagasaki University, ten women in their last trimester were shown an uplifting clip from the film The Sound Of Music — in which Julie Andrews skips gaily through alpine meadows — while their baby’s movements were monitored by ultrasound. 

The women also watched a tear‑jerking clip from boxing film The Champ. They wore earphones, so the baby couldn’t hear the soundtrack.

When the women watched the 'happy' film, their babies seemed stimulated and waved their arms. But during the sad film their movements decreased. 

Although the study included only a small number of women, it does at least hint that a baby can detect its mother’s mood. 

It’s thought this might occur because hormones, such as adrenaline, are released during times of stress or sadness and can redirect blood flow away from the uterus, which the baby picks up on.

WHY DO NEWBORNS HAVE BLUE EYES?

Eye colour is inherited, determined by the amount of a pigment called melanin that we produce. People who don’t produce much melanin have blue or grey eyes, while those who produce lots have brown eyes. 

At birth, however, very little melanin is produced — regardless of genes. This is why most babies’ eyes appear blue or blue-grey. But as babies’ eyes are exposed to the light, the body’s production of melanin is ramped up. 

If a baby is genetically programmed to produce lots of melanin, their eye colour will begin to change as the months go by. A baby’s eye colour will usually settle down around the age of six months and is unlikely to change much after this.

ARE SUMMER-BORN BABIES DIFFERENT FROM WINTER BABIES?

If a baby is born in the UK between September and December, they are statistically twice as likely to become a professional football player as a baby born in the summer months. 

Unfortunately they are also slightly more likely to suffer from panic attacks and, if male, to become an alcoholic in adulthood. 

Meanwhile, if you’re ambitious for your child to become a doctor, you might aim for an April-June birthday.

The effect of our birth month on our health is small, but significant enough that it can’t be dismissed. For example, babies born in the northern hemisphere in February, March and April are 5-10 per cent more likely to develop schizophrenia (one of the best-studied season-linked disorders). 

Different factors are likely to be at work here. Some studies have suggested that the increased risk of schizophrenia among babies born in the springtime is the result of their mother being exposed to viruses such as influenza during a critical period of pregnancy. 

More recently, scientists have proposed that vitamin D deficiency caused by low levels of sunlight during an autumn/winter pregnancy may be to blame, or that varying levels of brain chemicals such as serotonin and dopamine at different times of the year may play a role.

DO BABIES LIKE SOME PEOPLE BETTER THAN OTHERS?

Some people love babies, others can’t stand them — and little ones feel the same about us. 

Given a choice between photographs of two faces — one that had been rated as attractive by a group of adults and one rated unattractive — a newborn baby will choose to fixate on the more appealing face. 

But babies don’t just judge books by their covers. Newborns get upset if people’s facial expressions suggest they’re not responding to them. 

Experiments with babies as young as three hours old have shown that if their mother pulls a blank, expressionless face, the baby responds by decreasing their eye contact and showing signs of distress. 

This suggests that babies are born with certain expectations regarding the rules of communication — much like the rest of us.

WHY DO BABIES SAY 'DADA' BEFORE 'MAMA'?

Learning to speak requires the coordination of more than 70 different muscles and body parts, so it’s not until around seven or eight months of age that babies start to babble. 

Barbara L. Davis, of the University of Texas, travels the world trying to capture these first utterances and make sense of them using a tiny microphone attached to a bib.

From China to Holland, Ecuador to the UK and beyond, she says children are extremely alike during this babbling period. 

Sounds such as 'b', 'd', 'm' and 'g' combined with 'ah' seem to be easiest to make, so that’s where babies start.

Although many parents assume that 'Mama' and 'Dada' are among babies’ first words because these are the people who are important to them, baby babble doesn’t start taking on meaning until around ten months. 

Many babies do tend to say 'da' before 'ma', though, because early speech sounds tend to be produced by moving the lips, jaw and soft palate simultaneously. 

This is how we make 'ba' and 'da' sounds. 'Ma' requires us to move the lips and jaw but relax the soft palate — a more complex operation.

WHY DO WE SPEAK TO BABIES IN A SILLY VOICE?

We’ve all caught ourselves talking in a sing-song voice to babies, but does sounding silly really serve any purpose? 

The fact is, parents across the world show a common pattern when talking to babies. They raise the pitch of their voice, speak more slowly, elongate the vowels, repeat themselves and exaggerate changes in intonation. And there seems to be a good reason why. 

Recent research at Brown University in the U.S. showed that elongating vowel sounds when talking to toddlers enhanced their ability to recognise words. 

The exaggerated way we interact with babies seems to be important, too, for capturing their attention.

Disclaimer
The sole purpose of these blogs is to provide information about the tradition of ayurveda. This information is not intended for use in the diagnosis, prevention or cure of any disease. If you have any serious, acute or chronic health concern, please consult a trained doctor/health professional who can fully assess your needs and address them effectively. If you are seeking the medical advice of a trained Ayurvedic expert, call us or e mail.

Dr Unnati Chavda
(Promoting pregnancy wellness)
www.ayurvedapanchkarma.in

WHY DO NEWBORN BABIES SMELL SO GOOD?: RESEARCH VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Babies Remember Music Heard In The Womb : Research

According to the results of a small UK study, children recognize and prefer music they were exposed to in the womb for at least a year after they are born. Researcher Dr. Alexandra Lamont stated that while she found no evidence that just playing music to babies improved their intelligence, the results are exciting as they suggest that the developing brain is capable of storing and recovering memories over a long period of time.

Hepper added, ``At a more general level, the results indicate that environmental factors experienced by the fetus may have a long-term influence on its development. And they support the growing realization that the prenatal period is more important than previously thought.''

Birth of Musical Protégés? How Music Heard in the Womb is Remembered by the Child

A study carried out at the University of Leicester,  shown on BBC's Child Of Our Time - reveals for the first time that babies remember sounds they heard in the womb and recognise them well into later life.

The study, by Dr Alexandra Lamont from the Music Research Group at the University's School of Psychology, demonstrates how one-year-old babies recognise music they were exposed to up to three months before birth.

The discovery explodes the theory that babies can only remember things for a month or two and suggests that memory could last a great deal longer than that.

This provides important new evidence for the influence of nurture in early child development, said Dr Lamont, who is a lecturer in psychology.

She said: We know that the foetus in the womb is able to hear fully only 20 weeks after conception. Now we have discovered that babies can remember and prefer music that they heard before they were born over 12 months later.

The Child Of Our Time study involved a small group of mothers playing a single piece of music to their babies for the last three months before birth.

Dr Lamont said the music was chosen by the mother so all babies heard different pieces of music while still in the womb. These included classical (opera, Mozart and Vivaldi), world (Spirits of Nature), reggae (UB40, Ken Boothe) and pop (Five).

Over 12 months later, eleven of the babies were tested and showed a significant preference for these pieces of music compared with very similar pieces of music they had not heard before.

After the babies were a year old, they heard the pre-natal music and other music that was matched for style, key, pace and loudness. For example, a baby who was exposed to UB40's Many Rivers to Cross before birth heard this piece with another slow reggae track, Freddie McGregor's Stop Lovin' You.

The babies' preference is shown by the amount of time they spend looking towards the source of the music. Their attention is attracted by flashing disco lights, and the music then plays from a loudspeaker next to the light. When they stop looking in a particular direction, the music stops. The babies quickly learn the association between their looks and the amount of music they get to hear.

None of these babies had been exposed to the pre-natal music in the intervening period (i.e. from birth to first birthday). Dr Lamont says: This means that the preference found here is based on very long term memory rather than on a memory which is constantly reactivated by later exposure.

A control group of 11 babies tested with the same pieces of music show no preference for a particular piece this means there is nothing about the music itself which is responsible for the preferences found in the pre-natal group.

Dr Lamont said: This small-scale study suggests that deliberate and extended pre-natal exposure to music sets up a very long-term memory trace for a particular piece of music, and that this is recognised and preferred over 12 months later.

The style of the music is not important - the babies recognise UB40 just as much as they do Mozart. But the pace of the music seems to be influential - the babies with faster music like Five's If Ya Gettin' Down or the start of Vivaldi's Four Seasons show stronger preferences than the babies with slower music like Mozart's Adagio for Wind.

This relates to other findings by Dr Lamont that babies have developed clear preferences for faster and more exciting music by the age of 12 months.

LITERACY | musical memory, music intelligence

However, these babies' outstanding musical memories are not at all related to their intelligence. Dr Lamont emphasised that there is no evidence here that playing classical music to babies helps make their brains develop - the babies perform just as well with pop or reggae music, and the same high levels of musical memory are found in babies from families where IQ levels differ enormously.

Dr Lamont will be exploring the longer-term implications of these memory skills over the coming years with the Child Of Our Time babies, to find out how musical taste changes over time and how early music exposure relates to the children's involvement in musical activities later in life.

Sandra Trehub is one of the authors of a noted study on musically untutored babies, showing that they prefer harmony to dissonance. At a more complex level, this involves documenting infants' and young children's skill in discriminating and remembering realistic sound patterns such as melodies. In addition to the research on auditory perception, I conduct other research on singing to infants in the course of care-giving, an activity that seems to be universal. This research has a field component as well as a laboratory component, the field work involving the collection of samples of singing from various national and ethnic groups locally and abroad. One goal of this work is to document the similarities and differences in the nature of singing to infants across different languages and cultures. Another is to determine the effect of such singing on infant listeners.

Study senior Eino Partanen from Helsinki University said in this journal that even though they have previously presented that fetuses might learn petty details of speech, they did not realize    how  long they could possesses such information.

Such results represent that fetuses are able to learn at the very early age & such effects of learning remain possible in their brain for the long time.

In performing the study, the scientists asked women during their 3^rd trimester of pregnancy for playing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” minimum 5 times per week.

In the mean time, another group of women did not play either music when they are in final trimester.

Shortly after the birth, the scientists measured the brain activity of newborns’ while they listened to “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” also as an identical tune with few different notes in it, for determining if any learning had occurred. They repeated such assessment while the infants were 4 months old.

They observed that when newborns listened to the song before their birth, the brain activity was much healthier while they listened to the earliest song than when they listened to the altered version. Effect was still present while the fetuses were 4 months old.

The scientists said that the time span between the 27^th week of pregnancy & 6 months after an infant is born is crucial to the growth of the auditory system.-

Disclaimer
The sole purpose of these blogs is to provide information about the tradition of ayurveda. This information is not intended for use in the diagnosis, prevention or cure of any disease. If you have any serious, acute or chronic health concern, please consult a trained doctor/health professional who can fully assess your needs and address them effectively. If you are seeking the medical advice of a trained Ayurvedic expert, call us or e mail.

Dr Unnati Chavda
(Promoting pregnancy wellness)
www.ayurvedapanchkarma.in

Babies remember music heard in the womb : Research VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Our Health Is Shaped In The Womb: Research

When we hold a newborn baby for the first time, we imagine them clean and new, unmarked by life.

In fact, they have already been shaped by the world and by their mothers.

New scientific discoveries are revealing that the nine months spent in the womb ­profoundly affect a baby’s health and ­ well-being, well into adulthood.

Indeed, much of what a pregnant woman encounters in daily life — the food and drink she consumes, the emotions and stresses she feels, the exercise she takes, and even the job she does — is shared in some fashion with her unborn child. 

Early beginnings: A baby's health and wellbeing is profoundly affected by the nine months spent in the womb

Such new findings fundamentally ­question our assumption that major illnesses — from heart disease, to diabetes, to cancer — are caused by a combination of bad genes and bad adult habits.

In fact, there is a third risk factor of which we’ve taken too little account — our ­experiences in the womb, thanks to the lifestyle our mothers followed when pregnant.

Remarkable discoveries are being unearthed about this by Project Viva, a ­Harvard Medical School study of 2,670 ­pregnant women, which began in 1999.

Mothers’ diets and weight are particularly important, it shows, in raising a child’s risk of being overweight. This relationship ­persists into the child’s adolescent years. 

Compared with the teenagers of women who had moderate weight gain during ­pregnancy, the adolescent children of women who had excessive weight gain weighed more and were more likely to be obese.

Why? One possibility is that the bad food choices women make during ­pregnancy can influence the later food tastes of their children.

Give them a good start: A pregnant woman's healthy lifestyle can dramatically shape her unborn child's future

In an experiment with rats, published in the British Journal Of Nutrition, Stephanie Bayol and her colleagues at the Royal ­Veterinary College, in London, found that the offspring of mothers who’d been fed on junk food were 95 per cent more likely to overeat than those whose mothers had eaten healthy food, ­consuming around a fifth  more calories a day.

But there is a positive side to this effect: a good diet might preset a baby’s tastes for healthy food for life.

Research suggests human ­foetuses can experience tastes and smells in the womb; by seven months, the foetus’s taste buds are fully developed. And babies seem to prefer these familiar tastes once they are out in the world.

In one 2001 experiment, carried out at the Monell Chemical Senses Centre, in Philadelphia, a group of pregnant women were asked to drink carrot juice during their third ­trimester; another group of ­pregnant women drank water.

Six months later, the women’s infants were offered cereal mixed with carrot juice. The babies of the carrot-juice-­drinking women consumed more carrot-flavoured cereal and appeared to like its taste more.

And that’s just the start of it. The food eaten by a pregnant mother can also influence her baby’s long-term health.

Project Viva studies have found the children of women who have a higher intake of ­vitamin D during pregnancy — found in liver, dairy products and eggs — were less likely to show early signs of asthma.

Moreoever, a diet high in greens can apparently help to protect a baby against cancer.

Tests on pregnant mice at ­Oregon State University have shown that the babies of those who ate a chemical derived from cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cabbage, and brussels sprouts during pregnancy were much less likely to get cancer, even when exposed to a known carcinogen.

David Williams, the principal researcher, can imagine a day when pregnant women are prescribed a dietary supplement that will protect their future ­children from cancer. ‘It’s not ­science fiction,’ he says. ‘I think that’s where we’re headed.’

Certainly, the opposite effect — suffering malnutrition in the womb — presents a lasting ­danger for babies. It is increasingly linked to ills such as heart attacks and ­diabetes later in life. This was first seen in people conceived during the Nazis’ starvation of the Netherlands in 1944, when many expectant mothers survived on just 400-to-800 calories a day.

David Barker, a British doctor who has pioneered investigations into links between ­mothers’ diets and babies’ health, says: ‘One explanation is that foetuses are making the best of a bad job.

‘When nutrients are scarce, they divert them towards the really critical organ — the brain — and away from other organs, such as the heart and liver.’

Getting fit for the future: Research says exercising while pregnant can help a baby's heart rate

This keeps the baby alive in the short term, he says, but the bill comes due later in life, when the heart, deprived early on, becomes more vulnerable to disease.

‘But I believe that’s not all that’s going on,’ Barker continues. ‘I think that foetuses are actually taking cues from the womb ­environment and tailoring their physiology accordingly. They’re preparing themselves for the world they will encounter on the beyond the womb.’

The foetus adjusts its ­metabolism and other ­processes in anticipation of the ­environment that awaits it, Barker says, whether it’s the parched desert of ­Ethiopia or the bounteous aisles of an upmarket supermarket. And the basis of the ­foetus’s predilection is what its mother eats.

The damaging effects of poor nutrition in the womb have been made even more plain by research on the effects of fasting during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

Women who fasted while ­pregnant — gave birth to babies who were born earlier and had lower birth weights.

But womb-food is not the only key to a baby’s lifetime chances. Exercise may also have a vital effect on a baby’s future health.

Foetuses whose mothers performed moderate aerobic exercise, at least three times a week, showed the same benefits as their mothers — ­significantly lower heart rates and hearts which responded more healthily to physical demands — compared with ­foetuses whose mothers didn’t exercise, ­according to a study at Kansas City ­University of ­Medicine and Biosciences.

Science is also now revealing how a mother’s psychology can actually affect a baby. A pregnant mother’s level of stress and depression can play a particularly crucial role in ­influencing her baby’s developing brain and nervous system, potentially shaping the way he or she will manage their own emotions later in life.

Researchers at Columbia ­University, in the U.S., asked pregnant mothers to take ­intelligence tests while their unborn babies were scanned. All the mothers’ heart rates went up as they tried to pass the tests. In women who were depressed or anxious, their foetuses’ heart rates also rose. 

Says Professor Caroline Monk, leading the research: ‘That difference suggests that these foetuses are already more sensitive to stress. It could be that the ­foetuses’ nervous systems are already being shaped by their mothers’ emotional states.’

To add to this research, The National ­Children’s Study, in the U.S., is recruiting 100,000 pregnant women to track their children from before birth to the age of 21, interviewing the ­mothers about their habits and, during pregnancy, sampling their hair, blood, saliva and urine, and testing the water and dust in their homes.

Give them a good start: A pregnant woman's healthy lifestyle can dramatically shape her unborn child's future.

Getting fit for the future: Research says exercising while pregnant can help a baby's heart rate

Adapted from Origins: How The Nine Months Before Birth Shape The Rest Of Our Lives, by Annie Murphy Paul.

Disclaimer
The sole purpose of these blogs is to provide information about the tradition of ayurveda. This information is not intended for use in the diagnosis, prevention or cure of any disease. If you have any serious, acute or chronic health concern, please consult a trained doctor/health professional who can fully assess your needs and address them effectively. If you are seeking the medical advice of a trained Ayurvedic expert, call us or e mail.

Dr Unnati Chavda
(Promoting pregnancy wellness)
www.ayurvedapanchkarma.in

Our Health Is Shaped In The Womb: Research VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL