Anencephaly

[chaoticidealism]

I'm on the last day of finals week, finishing up a term paper for a fetal behavior class. My paper is on the neurological development of the premature infant, but along the way, I came up with some interesting ideas that can't go in the paper... so they are going here

Comments

Re: passing 'behavior' in the womb?

[chaoticidealism]

Technically, yes. The biggest example I can think of is food and taste preferences: When a pregnant woman eats something, chemicals from the food pass through the placenta, and the baby can actually taste the food while swallowing the amniotic fluid. The baby is learning what foods are available in the mother's environment, and will show a preference for the things that the mother ate while she was pregnant. Experimentally, for example: If you feed pregnant women a lot of carrots, then after they're born, their babies will like carrot juice more.

Babies can also hear what the mother is saying, will prefer her voice, and will prefer music they heard prenatally.

The mother's level of stress also affects the infant--if the developing fetus "senses" that s/he will be born into a high-stress environment, development changes slightly. Mostly animal studies here, but I guess it happens in humans too--for example, if you have pregnant mice in high-stress living conditions, their female offspring will be more aggressive. The idea is that these aggressive females will be better able to protect their young from whatever was stressing their mom out.

`Re: passing 'behavior' in the womb?

[ada_hoffmann]

Really? That's an actual thing (tasting the mom's food in the amniotic fluid)? Because I knew that was a thing in my family at least, but I didn't know that it was scientifically (as opposed to anecdotally) attested.

(My family jokes that I'm "made of Italian food", because for some reason, my pregnant mom could only keep down lasagna. :P Pasta is still my very favouritest thing to cook for myself. Well, that and homemade Chinese food, but the latter was an acquired taste. With my brothers, for similar reasons, it's all about crackers.)

Re: `Re: passing 'behavior' in the womb?

[chaoticidealism]

Did a quick Google search to see if I could find references--turns out NPR covered it a while ago and summarizes the research pretty well here:

Baby's Palate and Food Memories Shaped Before Birth

Re: `Re: passing 'behavior' in the womb?

[ada_hoffmann]

That's awesome, thanks!