WHEN DOES A FETUS GAIN SENTIENCE HOW TO
WHEN DOES A FETUS GAIN SENTIENCE SKIN

Feeling your skin instinctively helps your newborn to relax and create a strong attachment to you.В As he grows, your baby will feel objects around him and the pressure of the floor beneath him as he learns to roll and move. In those first moments after birth, his sense of touch will help him cough (a reaction to feeling and clearing liquid in his throat), cry (in response to the sudden change in his surroundings) and cuddle against you.ДЇrom the moment your baby arrives, his sense of touch will become essential to interacting with the world around him.

WHEN DOES A FETUS GAIN SENTIENCE HOW TO

The ability to feel amniotic fluid in his throat, for example, helps a baby learn how to swallow in utero. Instead of helping him acclimate to life after birth, fetal touch is mostly important for mediating reflexes. But this isnвЂ™t the case for his sense of touch - a fetus canвЂ™t feel anything in the outside world before birth! The sounds your baby hears and the patterns of light and dark he sees while still in your womb help him get used to the auditory and visual stimuli heвЂ™ll experience outside. The authors concluded that this means that not only are babies aware of other babies in the womb, but they also interact with their siblings and do so in specific and planned ways.

WhatвЂ™s more, when babies caressed their wombmateвЂ™s back or head, these actions seemed more intentional - they lasted longer and were more accurate - than when the babies touched their own eyes or mouths. The researchers found that the number of interactions gradually increased from week 14 on, so that by week 18, twin babies actually touched each other more than they touched themselves or the uterine wall. A very small study that followed five pairs of twins in utero concluded that they start to interact socially with each other by week 14 of pregnancy. Scientists believe that twins or multiples can sense each other in the womb - they even appear to begin interacting early in the second trimester! Well before theyвЂ™re born, babies seem wired to be social. Can babies sense other babies in the womb? Before then, a fetus reacts to touch with a change in heart rate or hormone levels, but the pain center of the brain doesn't receive or consciously recognize the message. Researchers using brain scanning methods on unborn babies think that fetuses probably feel pain around the same time that the somatosensory system finishes its development - about week 29 or week 30 of pregnancy. The complex neural circuitry necessary to tell the difference between regular touch and painful touch doesnвЂ™t develop until the end of the third trimester. Simply having the physical structures in place still doesnвЂ™t mean a fetus can experience pain. The neural connections and the brain structures necessary to sense pain donвЂ™t develop until at least week 24 of pregnancy. That requires not only touch receptors, but also the necessary molecules and pathways in the brain to process a pain signal. When can a fetus feel pain?Д®ven when a developing fetus can sense a light touch, he doesnвЂ™t feel pain the way you do. That includes his brain, spinal cord and even the digestive system. By week 32, every part of a fetus has gained a sense of touch thatвЂ™s sensitive enough to feel a single hair brushing across the body.Д«y sensing stimuli in the womb (e.g., as a baby starts to feel the amniotic fluid around him), the somatosensory receptors help to develop his whole nervous system. Over the next few months, touch receptors start to form all over, including his genitals, palms and the soles of his feet by week 12В and the abdomen by week 17. By week 8 of pregnancy, your baby has developed touch receptors in his face - mostly on his lips and nose - that connect to his growing brain. Parts of the somatosensory system start to form only a few weeks after conception. Touch is the first sense your baby develops before the senses of smell, taste, eyesightВ and hearing. In adults, just about every area of the body has these receptors - including under the skin of your fingers (to feel the things you touch), throughout your abdomen (so you can sense a stomachache) and in your lips and tongue (to help you know what youвЂ™re eating). Each receptor is uniquely tuned to sense one component of touch (temperature, pressure or pain, for instance).

This is essentially a network of touch receptors spread all over the body that connect back to the brain through nerve cells. For your baby to feel the fuzziness of the carpet during tummy time or the warmth of your body, he needs whatвЂ™s known as a somatosensory system.

When does a fetus gain sentience