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From: otto@ihuxi.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: Re: Rock Music & the Unborn
Message-ID: <438@ihuxi.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 13-Jun-83 16:57:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: ihuxi.438
Posted: Mon Jun 13 16:57:36 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 15-Jun-83 12:39:28 EDT
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Organization: BTL Naperville, Il.
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Why should pre-natal influences appear to be like Scientology?  I think they
can be grounded in ordinary, pedestrian neurophysiology.

Neural mylination begins at around 6 months of pregnancy and continues until
the child is around 2 or 3 years of age, if I recall my neurophysiology
correctly.  This means that the nerve fibers are beginning to process
sensory input at resonably normal rates beginning then.

Now what does it mean to say that sensory input is being processed?  Is it
reasonable to assume that a prenate is somehow inert, functioning on
automatic pilot until the moment of birth and only then begins to form
associations, memories, etc.?  Or is it more reasonable to assume that the
prenate is gradually arriving at consciousness and forming associations and
memories as soon as its nervous system permits?

I hold with this latter view.  As soon as the nervous system is capable of
sustaining transmission of action potentials from sensory receptors to the
brain, that is when the prenate begins to perceive and learn about the
world.

What kind of sensory input is a prenate likely to experience?  I think this
is an exciting question to follow up on.  Some years ago I heard about a
doll what was very successful in calming down neonates.  The doll was a
Teddy bear, but it's most unusual feature was that it contained a cassette
player that continuously played the sounds that had been recorded by a
microphone placed in a mother's womb, i.e., it replayed the sounds a prenate
would have heard.  Neonates hearing this would quickly calm down and fall
into slumber.

Is it likely that prenates can hear more than the sounds immediately around
them? the sounds of a mother's heart and lungs working? the thumps and bumps
of a mother's walking?  I would think so, and I would think simple
experiments could be performed to determine what "outside" sounds were
sufficiently intense to be readily perceived above the background noise of
the mother's bodily functions.  Somehow, rock music would seem to be one of
the more likely candidates for such perception.  What effect rock music
might have on a prenate is hard to say, but it seems likely, to me at any
rate, that such music could be heard by a prenate and built into whatever
memories and associations are being formed at that time.

Other candidates for such sounds, it seems to me, are the very low frequency
sounds of speech.  Low frequency sounds can be heard through barriers better
than high frequency sounds, and spoken communication is likely to be nearly
continuously available in the environment (as Mother talks to Father,
Doctor, friends; listens to TV and radio, etc.).  Are there any important
patterns to be learned in the low frequencies of speech?  Yes, indeed ...
the typical rhythms of communication!  Different cultures have different
rhythms for individual sentences and for the give-and-take of different
types of conversation.  A prenate, monitoring the muffled sounds of such
interaction, could already be acculturating itself, permitting itself *some*
mastery over William James "blooming, buzzing confusion" of sensory
perception after birth.

By the way, my Ph.D. Dissertation was in this area, focusing on the problems
of getting a computer to process sensory information the way neonates do.
If you want to read more, locate a copy of "Automatic Extraction of
Distinctive Features," Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1981.

					George Otto
					Bell Labs, Indian Hill
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