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Home › Articles › Newborn and Infant Months › The Ultimate Interaction

The Ultimate Interaction

Baby's Brain Meets World

By Norbert Herschkowitz, M.D., and Elinore Chapman Herschkowitz

Pages:  1  2  3  

During the baby's passage through the birth canal, the umbilical cord is squeezed, reducing the supply of blood from his mother. The oxygen level in the baby's blood goes down, and the carbon dioxide level rises. When the baby is born, the drop in oxygen makes him take a deep breath, causing his lungs to unfold and fill to full capacity. When the freshly expanded lungs suddenly release their contents, the air rushes through the narrow channel of the larynx and produces the baby's dramatic announcement of his presence, his first cry: "Here I am!"

The Brainstem's Big Moment
Babies arrive with a bright-eyed, alert expression, as if they are eager to become acquainted with their new world. This is also the work of the brainstem. When neurons in the brainstem are excited – by loud sounds or strong patterns of light, for example – the neurons produce a sudden surge of norepinephrine, a neurotransmitter that makes the infant more alert and ready for action. Thanks to the baby's breathing, his brain gets five times more oxygen than it had in the womb.

A popular word today is multimedia, but the brainstem has been in that business for a long time. The brainstem receives incoming sensations through separate channels, or "modes." Information from the eyes is in the "visual mode," what a baby hears is in the "auditory mode" and what he feels by touching his skin is in the "somatosensory mode." His brainstem integrates the input from the different channels, a multimodal process.

Brainy Baby
The brainstem is also "interactive." When a baby hears a sudden loud noise, he startles. The muscles of his whole body jerk in unison. When he sees a face nodding above him, he moves his head and eyes to follow it. His brainstem receives the signals and automatically activates the appropriate muscles.

Between mid-gestation and birth, an insulating sheath called myelin begins to form around the axons of the neurons in the brainstem, greatly increasing the speed and efficiency of the signals. The fact that myelination takes place so early in the brainstem is evidence of this structure's great importance. The intense activity going on in the brainstem around birth means that it needs extra energy right away. When brain cells are particularly active, they take up greater amounts of glucose, their main fuel.

Hello, Baby!


Pages:  1  2  3  

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