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From: softech@micomz.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: Re: Rock Music & the Unborn
Message-ID: <166@micomz.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 14-Jun-83 00:03:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: micomz.166
Posted: Tue Jun 14 00:03:58 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 14-Jun-83 16:24:56 EDT
References: cornell.4587
Lines: 37


	Unborn babies are ESPECIALLY sensitive to everything that happens
around them: within the woman's body, and in her immediate surroundings. This
sensitivity is due to the fact that development within the womb can be
steered and altered by minute "doses" of things that would not affect a grown
up, because the foetus is so small and grows so fast (his weight increase is
fastest before birth). Smoking, drinking, caffeine and other toxins all
affect the baby's development to a degree. Caffeine, for example will
increase the foetus heartbeat by a factor that is 8 times that of the
increase of the mother's heart. Booze has the same effect (a friend of mine
has chronic pancreatitis because her mother drank regularly during pregnancy).

	Influences from the environment outside of the mother's body have
been studied extensively by the science community (and NOT Scientology, god
forbid). In the area of auditive influences, I refer you to the (brillant)
works of Dr Alfred Tomatis, a french audiologist that has devoted his life to
the study of the role of sounds, and good hearing, in human health. In his
book "L'Oreille et la Vie" (Ear and Life) he reports cases of babies that had
actually learned the fundamentals of foreign languages before being born, and
many cases of babies born with hearing deficiencies due to exposure of the
mother to loud working environments. There is also evidence that babies of
mother musicians (especially cellists, because the instrument is held close
to the stomach) develop melodic and harmonic faculties at a much earlier age
than when the father is the musician and the mother is not. There is much
argument that these differences can be attributed to genetic factors, but
Tomatis's figures seem to indicate that the acoustic environment the mother
is exposed to has significant influence on the foetus, especially between
months 4-9 of gestation.

Richard "Turn that volume DOWN" Blouin.

PS. If you want to know is Rock affects YOUR ears, the rule is as follows:

	If your ears ring or buzz after exposure, then some damage has
	ALREADY occured. Damage is usually loss of sensitivity to higher
	frequencies (above 10KHz). Repeated exposure of this sort always
	results in PERMANENT damage.