Biology Asked on December 3, 2020
According to When a fetus hear , When a baby can hear in the womb and several other similar articles, a baby starts to hear sounds at week 18. And according to How hearing works. Hearing involves
nerves communicate to the brain. The hearing nerve then sends the
information to the brain with electrical impulses, where they are
interpreted as sound.
Does this actually mean a brain is actually processing auditory signals at 18 weeks of human development, or is the brain at 18 weeks only processing sounds by a process that doesn’t involve the brain? Perhaps the conclusion might seem obvious for some, but not for me considering the supposed inability of the brain to process several others (or any other?) kind of signals at that stage, such as pain At what stage is the nervous system developed enough to interpret neuronal signals as ‘pain’? and being the hearing experience directly connected to pain sometimes.
According to a concise review by Graven & Brown (2008) the development of the auditory system (Fig. 1) in the human is as follows:
* Gestational age is a measure of the age of a pregnancy which is taken from the beginning of the woman's last menstrual period (LMP), or the corresponding age of the gestation as estimated by a more accurate method if available. Gestational age can be obtained by adding 14 days to the point of fertilization.
Fig. 1. The adult auditory system. source: Graven & Brown, 2007
Reference
- Graven & Brown, Newborn Infant Nurs Rev (2007); 8(4): 187-93
Answered by AliceD on December 3, 2020
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