Scientists have finally solved the mystery of why babies kick in their mother’s wombs.
It’s one of the things that everyone talks about during a pregnancy – is the baby kicking? Do you want to feel the baby kicking?
However, it might surprise you to learn that we haven’t been exactly sure why they do it in the past.
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Now, a team of Japanese scientists have found that the seemingly random movements are part of the development of the sensorimotor system, which is how babies learn stuff like hand-eye co-ordination and how to control their bodies.
So, when infants are kicking and moving around, they’re actually learning stuff for when they are on the outside.
Using a sophisticated motion capturing model, scientists recorded the movements of 12 newborns and 10 infants, and linked it to their brain activity.
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They found that when babies make these seemingly random movements, their brain activity indicated they were trying to make spatial sense of their bodies, rather than trying to learn a specific action.
Unborn babies start to kick in the womb around 18 to 20 weeks into pregnancy - and it's believed this is for the same reason.
This is also important as it adds to the scientific understanding of certain medical conditions and disorders, including things like motor neurone disease, spinal injuries, and cerebral palsy.
It could eventually help bring about earlier diagnoses and help make treatment of illnesses better.
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Valuable stuff, then.
The co-author of the study from the University of Tokyo, Dr Hoshinori Kanazawa, said: “Previous research into sensorimotor development has focused on kinematic properties, muscle activities which cause movement in a joint or a part of the body.
“However, our study focused on muscle activity and sensory input signals for the whole body.
“By combining a musculoskeletal model and neuroscientific method, we found spontaneous movements, which seem to have no explicit task or purpose, contribute to coordinated sensorimotor development.”
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He added: “We were surprised during spontaneous movement, infants’ movements ‘wandered’ and they pursued various sensorimotor interactions.
“We named this phenomenon ‘sensorimotor wandering’.
“It has been commonly assumed sensorimotor system development generally depends on the occurrence of repeated sensorimotor interactions, meaning the more you do the same action the more likely you are to learn and remember it.
“However, our results implied infants develop their own sensorimotor system based on explorational behaviour or curiosity, so they are not just repeating the same action but a variety of actions.
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“In addition to this, our findings provide a conceptual linkage between early spontaneous movements and spontaneous neuronal activity.”
Complicated though this all is, it seems to suggest that babies can start to develop co-ordination skills through whole-body movements with no specific purpose.
Now, Kanazawa wants to see how this affects later development as well as some of the more complex stuff that babies learn at a later date.
He said: “My original background is in infant rehabilitation.
“My big goal through my research is to understand the underlying mechanisms of early motor development and to find knowledge that will help to promote baby development.”
Tom Wood