Study
Finds
Unborn
Babies Respond to Mother's Mood
Scientists have discovered that unborn babies respond to their mother's
mood while she is watching a movie, becoming quiet and still if the
film is sad and very lively if the film is happy.
Dr. Kazuyuki Shinohara and colleagues in the Department of Neurobiology
and Behavior of Nagasaki University in Japan showed 10 pregnant
volunteers a cheery 5-minute clip from the Julie Andrews musical The
Sound of Music. Another 14 watched a tear-jerking 5 minutes from the
1979 Franco Zeffirelli film The Champ, in which a boy cries at the
death of his father.
Each clip was sandwiched between two "neutral" film clips so that the
team could measure any changes in fetal movements against a baseline.
The women listened to the movies using headphones to guarantee that
only the effect of the mothers' emotions was being measured and that
their unborn babies were not being influenced by the movie's soundtrack.
"Fetuses can hear by the last trimester," explained Dr. Shinohara.
The team counted the number of arm, leg and whole body movements via
ultrasound and found that during the happy film clip the unborn babies
moved their arms significantly more than when the pregnant women
watched the neutral clips.
However, the unborn babies of the women watching the sad clip moved
their arms significantly less than normal.
"These findings suggest that induced emotions in pregnant women
primarily affect arm movements of their fetuses, and that positive and
negative emotions have the opposite effects on fetus movement," Dr.
Shinohara wrote in his report.
Outlining the motive for his research Dr. Shinohara said that the
association between maternal psychological well-being during pregnancy
and fetal welfare has recently attracted increasing attention.
"Chronic stress exposure for pregnant women affects fetal development,
resulting in preterm birth and low birth weight. In addition to stress,
persistent negative maternal emotions during pregnancy such as anxiety,
depression, and anger also exert an influence on fetal and later
development of a child," Shinohara explained.
Shinohara concluded that while it was unclear what makes the unborn
child of a happy mother "wave," he suggests that sadness releases more
of the "fight or flight" hormone epinephrine (adrenalin), which
redirects blood away from the uterus and prepares muscles for exertion.
The study, titled "Fetal response to induced maternal emotions" was
published by The Journal of Physiological Sciences in January, 2010.
Click
here for an abstract of the study.
Contact: Thaddeus M. Baklinski
Source:
LifeSiteNews.com
Publish
Date:
March 11, 2010
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