Baby In Mother's Womb Can See And Sense Lot More Than We Previously Knew, New Study Reveals

The process of a child growing and coming to life inside a mother¡¯s womb is nothing short of miraculous. Researches in the past revealed that a child in a womb can see blurred images by the time they reach 26-28 weeks.

But new research sheds more light on this process, revealing that a growing child can actually see a lot more while still inside the womb.

In fact, the light-sensitive cells developing in the retina were presumed to be ordinary on and off switches that were designed to set the child to the rhythm of day and night. However, a recent discovery has revealed that the child can see a whole lot more than this limited previous assumption, right when he or she is in the womb.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkley (published first in Current Biology) have revealed that these light-sensitive cells actually communicate as a part of a complex network, offering more light sensitivity to the retina. This is expected to alter the influence of light on brain development and the child¡¯s behaviour in ways never seen before.

In a developing eye of a child in a womb, three percent of ganglion cells (the cells responsible to send messages through the optic nerve in the brain) are sensitive to light, and now researchers have discovered six different subtypes that talks to different parts of the brain -- some communicate with suprachiasmatic nucleus (that is responsible for setting our body¡¯s internal clock to the day-night cycle), some communicate with the area in the brain responsible to make our pupils change shape in bright light.

But some connected to a bunch of rather unusual places -- the perihabenula, that manages our mood, and the amygdala, that deals with emotions.

Marla Feller, a UC Berkeley professor of molecular and cell biology and senior author of a paper said in a statement, "Given the variety of these ganglion cells and that they project to many different parts of the brain, it makes me wonder whether they play a role in how the retina connects up to the brain."

She further added, "Maybe not for visual circuits, but for non-vision behaviours. Not only the pupillary light reflex and circadian rhythms, but possibly explaining problems like light-induced migraines, or why light therapy works for depression."

They also conducted a study with mice and monkey pups where they discovered that these ganglion cells also communicate through electrical connections called gap junctions. This basically means that even immature rodents and monkey eyes are far complex than imagined before.

Fella states, "We thought they (mouse pups and the human fetus) were blind at this point in development. We thought that the ganglion cells were there in the developing eye, that they are connected to the brain, but that they were not really connected to much of the rest of the retina, at that point. Now, it turns out they are connected to each other, which was a surprising thing."