Brain Rules for Baby

Brain Rules for Baby by John Medina Read Free Book Online

Book: Brain Rules for Baby by John Medina Read Free Book Online
Authors: John Medina
The effect is so powerful that what you eat during the last stages of pregnancy can influence the food preferences of your baby.
    In one study, scientists injected apple juice into the wombs of pregnant rats. When the rat pups were born, they showed a dramatic preference for drinking apple juice. A similar taste preference happens with humans. Mothers who drank lots of carrot juice in the later
stages of pregnancy had babies who preferred carrot juice after birth. This is called flavor programming, and you can do it soon after your baby is born, too. Lactating mothers who eat green beans and peaches while nursing produce weaned toddlers with the same preferences.
    It’s possible that anything that can cross the placenta can incite a preference.

A balancing act
    From touch and smell to hearing and vision, babies have an increasingly active mental life in the womb. What does this mean for parents eager to aid that development? If motor skills are so important, shouldn’t moms-to-be do cartwheels every 10 minutes to induce the Moro Reflex in their in utero partners? If food preferences are established in the womb, shouldn’t moms-to-be become vegetarians in the last half of pregnancy if they want their kids to eat fruits and vegetables? And is there an effect, beyond creating potential preferences, of pumping Mozart or Dr. Seuss into your unborn baby’s brain?
    It is easy to start making assumptions. So, a word of caution. These studies represent the edge of what is known, and it is very easy to over-interpret what the data mean. These are all interesting research questions. But today’s data are not strong enough to solve the mystery of early mental life. They are just enough to reveal it.
     
    Just right
    The biology of infant brain development reminds me of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The classic version of the story describes a young girl with blond hair breaking into and essentially vandalizing a bear family’s vacant hut. She samples and renders judgments over their bowls of porridge, chairs, and beds. Goldilocks doesn’t like Papa Bear’s or Mama Bear’s materials; the physical characteristics are just too extreme. But Baby Bear’s stuff is “just right”,
from temperature to sturdiness to the bed’s cozy comfort. Like so many legendary children’s stories, there are many renditions of this odd little tale. The first published version, by 19th-century poet Robert Southey, had an angry old woman breaking into the bears hut and sampling the wares of three male bears. Some literary historians suggest Southey borrowed from the story of Snow White, who breaks into the dwarves house, tastes their food, sits on their stools, and then falls asleep on one of their beds. In one early version of “Goldilocks”, the intruder was a fox, not a woman; later she became a girl variously called Silver Hair, Silver-Locks, and Golden Hair. But the “just right” principle is preserved throughout.
    So many creatures have this just-right characteristic embedded in their biology that scientists have given the phenomenon its own rather unscientific name: the Goldilocks Effect. It is so common because biological survival in this hostile world often calls for a balancing act between opposing forces. Too much or too little of something, such as heat or water, often hurts biological systems, most of which are obsessed with homeostasis. A full description of many biological processes involves this “just right” idea.

4 things proven to help baby’s brain
    The behaviors proven to aid and abet brain development in the womb—especially important in the second half of pregnancy—all follow the Goldilocks principle. We will look at four of these balancing acts:
    • weight
    • nutrition
    • stress
    • exercise
    And there’s not a pregaphone in sight.

1. Gain just the right weight
    You’re pregnant, so you need to eat more food. And if you don’t overdo it, you will grow a smarter baby. Why? Your baby’s IQ is a

Similar Books

A Dose of Murder

Lori Avocato

Saved by the SEAL

Diana Gardin

Natalie Acres

Sex Retreat [Cowboy Sex 6]

Center Stage

Bernadette Marie

Revenge

David Pilling

The Night Watch

Sarah Waters