TED Talks
Fetal Learning
We have known for many years that the first few years of childhood greatly influence how and what we learn later in life. Check out this TED video:
Everyone has heard about playing classical music to a
pregnant woman’s belly to instill an early love of music, but now there is
actual research that shows the life of a fetus in the womb is already playing a
role. Turns out that a much more
primeval kind of learning is going on.
The kind of nutrition the expectant mother consumes has a
direct effect on the development of the child than anyone would have thought.
Children born at the end of WWII in Holland shared their mother’s hunger as the
population experienced near starvation prior to liberation by the allied
forces. Those children would later exhibit much higher incidence of obesity,
diabetes and similar disorders. The conjecture is that their bodies were
conditioned in the womb to prepare for a world of scarcity and privation, but
were born into a life of plenty.
Other experiments showed the dietary preferences of the
mother were transferred to the fetus as well. One study showed that women with
excessive weight gain during pregnancy had children with a much higher risk of
being overweight by the age of 3. All
very interesting stuff- sheds a whole new light on the hot-button issue
of when life begins.
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