Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbomb here with a plastic episode for you from
Speaker 1: the vault. In this one, we look at the first
Speaker 1: things that we humans may actually be able to look at.
Speaker 1: Period A growing fetus doesn't even develop retinas until the
Speaker 1: third trimester, and we can't ask them what they see
Speaker 1: at that point, but researchers have studied how they respond
Speaker 1: to visual cues during that home stretch before birth. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren voel Bomb here. It might seem like
Speaker 1: fetuses aren't up to all that much other than growing
Speaker 1: in the cozy, warm environment that is their mother's womb,
Speaker 1: and I mean growing from a bundle of cells into
Speaker 1: an independently living, breathing human being is a big enough job. However,
Speaker 1: research published in the Journal of Current Biology shows that
Speaker 1: third trimester fetuses have vision capabilities much more advanced than
Speaker 1: previously thought, and further, they can choose what they want
Speaker 1: to look at. Researchers from Lancaster University in the United
Speaker 1: Kingdom were keen on expanding the understanding of fetal site capabilities.
Speaker 1: We spoke via email with Vincent Reid, the lead researcher
Speaker 1: and a professor of psychology. He said, we've been able
Speaker 1: to explore the use of all the fetal senses except
Speaker 1: for vision, up until now. There's a lot that we
Speaker 1: know about newborn babies and their vision, but almost nothing
Speaker 1: with fetuses just before they're born. The newborn is very
Speaker 1: good at processing faces and prefers to look at faces
Speaker 1: over any other shape, so it was logical to explore
Speaker 1: the development of this preference before birth. The researchers examined
Speaker 1: a total of thirty nine fetuses. There would have been more,
Speaker 1: but some of the babies were in deep sleep because
Speaker 1: they apparently missed the memo about participating in a research study,
Speaker 1: while other tests experienced poor image quality. The fetuses ranged
Speaker 1: in gestational age from two hundred and thirty one to
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty two days that's about thirty three
Speaker 1: to thirty six weeks. Site is the final sense to
Speaker 1: develop inside the womb, with eyes staying closed until around
Speaker 1: gestational week twenty eight. This is because fetal retinas aren't
Speaker 1: developed until that point. Oh and all of the babies
Speaker 1: were singletons. No twins or multiple pregnancies were studied because
Speaker 1: the safety and comfort of the fetal participants and their
Speaker 1: mothers was of utmost importance. The researchers designed non invasive
Speaker 1: attempts to assess the baby's visual capabilities. To do so,
Speaker 1: the scientists shone lights through the maternal tissue. Reid explained
Speaker 1: the light consisted of three dots. When these are arranged
Speaker 1: to represent two for the eyes and one for the mouth,
Speaker 1: newborn babies prefer to look at them more than anything else,
Speaker 1: so we didn't show fetuses of face, but an image
Speaker 1: that was face like. The researchers used forty ultrasound to
Speaker 1: measure if and how much the fetuses turned their heads
Speaker 1: in response to the stimuli. They also showed the same
Speaker 1: three dot pattern, but inverted, so it didn't resemble a
Speaker 1: face in structure to the fetuses. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: non face like dots weren't as appealing. Reid noted that
Speaker 1: newborns don't find these configurations very interesting either. Although subtle
Speaker 1: attraction to the facelike configuration of three dots makes a
Speaker 1: big difference in what we understand about developing site, Reed said,
Speaker 1: it means we have this preference even before we're born.
Speaker 1: It's either due to being innate or due to experiences
Speaker 1: prior to birth. Another major finding of this research is
Speaker 1: that it moves up the human visual timeline. Reed said,
Speaker 1: we now know that the fetus actively engages with visual
Speaker 1: information in the prenatal environment. The head movement was a
Speaker 1: deliberate movement to track the stimuli that we presented. This
Speaker 1: means that we can now look at many other aspects
Speaker 1: of fetal vision. The study has laid the groundwork for
Speaker 1: future delving into fetal vision because as it stands right now,
Speaker 1: little is known about how much fetuses can see. Reed said,
Speaker 1: a week old infant has very poor focal vision. It's
Speaker 1: all blurred. The same will be true for fetus a
Speaker 1: few weeks before birth. We know that premature infants can
Speaker 1: see shapes, lights, and details, but that's once they are born,
Speaker 1: and it could be that the prenatal environment is different.
Speaker 1: We need to find that out. Reid's group plans to
Speaker 1: investigate whether fetuses can discriminate between quantities or numbers, which
Speaker 1: he notes is something that newborns can do. He said,
Speaker 1: if the fetus can do this too, this tells us
Speaker 1: a lot about fetal cognitive abilities. We're also keen to
Speaker 1: look at how the fetus sees motion, babies prefer to
Speaker 1: look at animate or biological motion. If the fetus has
Speaker 1: this preference, this would suggest that experiences they've had engaging
Speaker 1: with their own body may have given rise to these preferences.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article what do Babies
Speaker 1: See before Birth? On how stuffworks dot com written by
Speaker 1: Leah Hoy. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership
Speaker 1: with how stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang.
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