It is often believed that birth is the moment when our life begins as beings capable of gaining their autonomy. It is easy to think that the social life of human beings begins when there is no longer a physical separation between us and others. When we are able to breathe the same air, see the same things and look into each other’s eyes.

This is all very intuitive and seems even natural, but it is not true. Long before we leave our mother’s womb we already have the possibility of learning things about the environment in which we will one day live , as many experiments show.

Perception begins even inside the uterus

It is known that we are able to recognize the mother’s vocalizations long before we are born . This is already an example of learning, since it has to do with knowledge formed through repeated experiences and with a practical purpose (recognizing the person who is going to take care of us once we are born). In fact, it is recommended that mothers speak to their unborn babies so that from the first moments they have different stimuli and can exercise their different skills. However, this phenomenon is only a sample of the many ways in which experience shapes our behaviour during the period of pregnancy.

Sound recognition is not limited to the voices of people close to you. It can be extended to other everyday sounds during the months of pregnancy. For example, there is evidence that unborn babies can recognize in the music of television series that their mother usually watches.

In addition, babies are able to recognize not only their mother’s voice, but also her smell. Interestingly, newborns prefer the smell of sweat if it is their mother’s . Babies of a few weeks of age react very strongly when they are exposed to the smell of the amniotic fluid in which they have been involved. This fact can give an idea of the key to recognizing the mother’s odor in objects she leaves behind.

Beyond the senses of hearing and smell, touch also plays a role in learning during pregnancy. Recent research published in PLoS ONE shows how fetuses tend to respond to the mother’s touch on her womb by doing something similar to her body. In fact, the babies used as samples responded more intensely to these caresses than to the mother’s voice, and they did so by touching their own thorax in a similar way as someone else was doing on the other side of the womb. The researchers believe this is an attempt to communicate with the mother.

Research continues

These are some of the conclusions reached by the experimental route, but it is likely that there are other examples of pre-birth learning that have not yet been discovered. Overall, this research shows that the mother’s womb is as valid an environment for learning as any other , even if we do it without even starting to turn a year.

Bibliographic references:

  • Beauchamp, G. K., Katarina, K., Yamazaki, K., Mennella, J. A., Bard, J. and Boyse, E. A. (1995). Evidence suggesting that the odour types of pregnant women are a compound of maternal and fetal odour types . PNAS, 92, pp. 2617 – 2621.
  • Hepper, P. G. (1988). Fetal “soap” addiction. The Lancet, 23(2), pp. 1347 – 1348.
  • Marx, V. and Nagy, E. (2015). Fetal Behavioural Responses to Maternal Voice and Touch. PLoS ONE, accessed here.