remember this being a funny moment; we had a good laugh. But it was also sincere. I could see the questioning look in their eyes.
Whenever I lecture on the extraordinary mental life of the developing fetus, I can almost feel a wave of panic ripple across the room. Pregnant couples in the audience become concerned, then start furiously scribbling down notes, often talking in excited whispers to their neighbors. Parents with grown children sometimes seem satisfied, sometimes regretful; a few even look guilty. There is skepticism, wonder, and, above all, lots of questions. Can a baby really learn Morse code in the latter stages of pregnancy? And if he could, would it do him any good?
Scientists have uncovered many new insights about a baby’s mental life in the womb. In this chapter, we’ll delve into the magnificent mystery of how brains develop—all starting from a handful of tiny cells. We’ll talk about what that means for Morse code, detailing the things proven to aid in utero brain development. Hint: There are only four. And we will explode a few myths along the way; for one, you can put away your Mozart CDs.
Quiet, please: Baby in progress
If I were to give a single sentence of advice based on what we know about in utero development during the first half of pregnancy, it would be this: The baby wants to be left alone.
At least at first. From the baby’s point of view, the best feature of life in the womb is its relative lack of stimulation. The uterus is dark, moist, warm, as sturdy as a bomb shelter, and much quieter than the outside world. And it needs to be. Once things get going, your little embryo’s pre-brain will pump out neurons at the astonishing rate of 500,000 cells a minute. That’s more than 8,000 cells per second, a pace it will sustain for weeks on end. This is readily observable three weeks after conception, and it continues until about the midpoint in your pregnancy. The kid has a great deal to accomplish in a very short time! A peaceful lack of interference from amateur parents is just what you’d expect the baby to need.
In fact, some evolutionary biologists believe this is why morning sickness still persists in human pregnancies. Morning sickness, which can last the entire day (and, for some women, the entire pregnancy), makes a woman stick to a bland, boring diet—if she eats much at all. This avoidance strategy would have kept our maternal ancestors away from the natural toxins in exotic or spoiled foods in the wild, unregulated menu of the Pleistocene diet. The accompanying fatigue would keep women from engaging in physical activity risky enough to harm the baby.
Researchers now think it could make the baby smarter, too. One study, yet to be replicated, looked at children whose mothers suffered from major nausea and vomiting during pregnancy. When the children reached school age, 21 percent scored 130 or more points on a standard IQ test, a level considered gifted. If their mothers had no morning sickness, only 7 percent of kids did that well. The researchers have a theory—still to be proved—about why. Two hormones that stimulate a woman to vomit may also act like neural fertilizer for the developing brain. The more vomiting, the more fertilizer; hence, the greater effect on IQ.
Whatever the reasons, the baby seems to be going to great lengths to get you to leave it alone.
How good are we at leaving baby alone—at this stage or any other in the womb? Not very. Most parents have a gnawing desire to do something to help baby, especially when it comes to baby’s brain. Fueling that drive is an enormous sector of the toy economy whose sole strategy is, I am convinced, to play off the fears of well-meaning parents. Pay close attention, for I am about to save you a ton of money.
Pregaphones and prodigies
Shopping in a toy store several years ago, I came across an ad for a DVD designed for newborns and toddlers, called Baby Prodigy. The flier stated: “Did you know that you can actually help to enhance the development of your baby’s brain? The first 30 months of life is the period when a child’s brain undergoes its most critical stages of evolution… . Together we can help to make your child the next Baby Prodigy!” It made me so angry, I crushed the flier and threw it in the garbage can.
These outlandish claims have a long history. The late 1970s saw the creation of Prenatal University, a for-purchase curriculum that claimed to boost a baby’s attention span, cognitive performance, and vocabulary, all before labor. The kid actually received a degree declaring him or her “Baby Superior” after birth. The late ’80s introduced the Pregaphone, a glorified funnel-and-speaker system designed to pump into a pregnant woman’s belly the mother’s voice or classical music or whatever other IQ-boosting noise du jour. More products soon followed, complete with some extraordinary advertising hype: “Teach your baby to spell in the womb!” “Teach your child a second language before birth!” “Improve your baby’s math scores by playing classical music!” Mozart was a particular favorite, culminating in something you may have heard before: the Mozart Effect. Things did not get better in the 1990s. Books published in that decade outlined short, daily activities for pregnant couples claiming to “raise your baby’s IQ as much as 27 to 30 points” and increase your baby’s attention span “as much as 10 to 45 minutes.”
No commercial product has ever been shown to do anything to improve the brain performance of a developing fetus.
If you walk into any toy store today, you are bound to find products making similar claims. Almost none of their assertions are backed up by in-house testing, let alone backed up by independent, peer-reviewed research.
Crinkle. Toss.
Believe it or not, no commercial product has ever been shown in a scientifically responsible manner (or even in an irresponsible non-scientific manner) to do anything to improve the brain performance of a developing fetus. There have been no double-blind, randomized experiments whose independent variable was the presence or absence of the gadget. No rigorous studies showing that an in utero education curriculum produced long-term academic benefits when the child entered high school. No twins-separated-at-birth studies attempting to tease out nature and nurture components of a given product’s effects. That includes the in utero university. And the in utero Mozart.
Sadly, myths rush in when facts are few, and they have a way of snaring people. Even after all these years, many of these products are still out there, functioning like untethered gill nets, trapping unsuspecting parents into parting with their hard-earned dollars.
The rush to create marketable products is appalling to us in the research community. Their spuriousness is also counter-productive. These products generate so much attention, they can obscure the reporting of some truly meaningful findings. There are activities that expecting parents can do to aid the cognitive development of their baby-under-construction. They’ve been tested and evaluated, with the results hashed out in refereed scientific literature. To understand their value, you need to know a few facts about the developing infant brain. Once you get a peek at what’s really going on in there, it will be easy to see why so many products are just hype.
Let’s get it on
The opening cast members of the baby-making play are simply a sperm and an egg and a saucy Marvin Gaye song. Once these two cells are joined, they begin producing lots of cells in a small space. The human embryo soon looks like a tiny mulberry. (Indeed, one early development stage is called the morula, Latin for mulberry.) Your mulberry’s first decision is practical: It has to decide what part becomes baby’s body and what part becomes baby’s shelter. This happens quickly. Certain cells are assigned to housing construction, creating the placenta and the water balloon in which the embryo will float, the amniotic sac. Certain cells are assigned the duties of constructing the embryo, creating a knot of internal tissues termed the inner cell mass.
We need to stop right here and contemplate something: The inner cell mass at this stage possesses a cell whose entire offspring
