My partner is lying on her back and both of us are trying to hide our nervousness about the first ultrasound of the pregnancy. As the examination starts, we hold hands and stare intently at the bedside screen. Initially, the monitor shows little more than a shifting cauldron of grey and black organic forms but as the doctor fiddles with the machine, an image of our future son emerges from the monochrome static. I find myself looking at a picture that shows both the profile of his face and his developing brain and I am, unexpectedly, lost for words. This experience, repeated around the world, is both commonplace and astonishing. For the first time in history, most parents now see their child’s brain before they look into their eyes.
Brain development during pregnancy is key for future health, which is why it gets checked so thoroughly during prenatal examinations. But neuroscientists have become increasingly interested in how the activity of the brain becomes progressively integrated and synchronised during development to support human experience, something developmental neuroscientist Moriah Thomason calls “bringing us closer to the blueprints of the brain”. These “blueprints” are not easy to read, however, as they are encased within a tiny skull and float within the mother’s body, protected and nurtured from the outside world, making them a difficult subject for scientific study. Undeterred, groups of innovative researchers have begun to develop technology to gently and non-invasively visualise the activity of the brain as it develops in the womb.
[For more of this story, written by Vaughan Bell, go to http://www.theguardian.com/sci...for-the-brain-babies]
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