Is it true that listening to classical music by a pregnant woman has a positive effect on the fetus?

It is widely believed that during pregnancy it is useful to listen to classical music, as this will be good in the future will affect the child. We decided to check if there is a scientific evidence of this belief.

Not only numerous write about the benefits of classical music during intrauterine development sites And Forumsdedicated parental. Information about this can be found on the site Unisef, metropolitan maternity hospital at the GKB named after S. S. Yudin, as well as in Some Media. On various Musical sites Can Even meet special ones Collections With music for pregnant women. Typically, the list of recommended works includes the works of Mozart, Bach and Vivaldi. Some non -core sites report that it Can form certain musical preferences and even reward the future child with absolute hearing.

To begin with, we agree that official terminology will be used in the text: an embryo or embryo is called the body until the ninth week of intrauterine development, the fetus from the ninth week until birth, from the moment of birth, a child or baby. The quotes given in the text will not always reflect the correct terminology, which will be made in brackets.

The body begins to perceive sounds early enough. Hearing organs Formed From the ectoderm - the external germinal leaf. From approximately the 16th week the fetus Starts Hear sounds - both internal (mother's heartbeat, the sound of her peristalsis), and external. Perinatal development experts advise from now on to start talking with the unborn child aloud. From the 21st week (middle of the second trimester), the fetus begins not only to hear, but also react to external sounds. And in the third trimester on KTG you can notice Change in heart rhythm in response to a sharp sound. Thus, the scientists regarding the presence of hearing in the fetus during intrauterine development, in principle, have no doubts.

Finnish scientists conducted experimentProving that the music listened with intrauterine remains in the child’s memory after birth. In the third trimester, pregnant women regularly listened to the same composition, it was also included in children at the age of four months. The babies who heard this song before birth reacted more actively to it than the control group of babies who heard this music for the first time.

Spanish scientists investigatedWhat compositions cause the fetus most often: in the top were Mozart’s “little night serenade”, Christmas hymns and the “Bohemian rapexia” of the Queen group.

And the director of the research institute of obstetrics and gynecology named after Ott Eduard Aylamazyan at the same time Notesthat not all classical music is equally useful: “Some works, such as Shostakovich’s“ Seventh Symphony, ”can create an unnecessary feeling of anxiety. During pregnancy, you can recommend listening to the violin, cello, flute, duduk and, of course, organ. Of course, the works of Bach, Handel and, of course, Mozart, can be recommended. ”

Researchers also notedthat melodies with a descending melodic line (from the salt of the second octave to the first octave) Calm off Both the fruit and the newborn, slowing down the heartbeat, and the melodies with the rising line (from the salt of the first octave to the second octave), on the contrary, activated it. In order for scientists to be more clear, you can listen to the song of the Nautilus Pompilius group as an example of the descending line "To Eloise", and as an ascending - The aria of the queen of the night From the opera "Magic Flute" of Mozart.

However, all these studies concerned only the physical activity of the fetus. There are not so many experiments regarding the influence on the intellectual sphere. Scientists from the University of Airlangga (Indonesia) Spent Comparative rates on rats. Pregnant animals included different music: Mozart, modern jazz, blues or rock. From the 10th to the 19th day of pregnancy (in total, rats bear offspring of 21-24 days), females listened to the composition of a certain genre for an hour. Then the fruits were aborted, and scientists calculated the number of brain cells in the unborn rats. The group in which mothers listened to Mozart showed a statistically significant excess of the number of nerve cells in both hemispheres of the brain. Of course, the corresponding experiment in public is impossible due to its inequality.

It is also worth noting that there is no direct dependence between the number of nerve cells and intellectuality. Scientists for now Not found Confirmation that intrauterine listening to classical music has a statistically significant effect on the level of intelligence of the child in the future. No too confirmationthat music can be used as therapeutic therapy, since all changes in the body of the fetus caused by it are not sufficiently predicted and long in terms of exposure.

All this suggests that listening to music in the intrauterine period does not definitely go unnoticed for the fetus, but it is unlikely to significantly improve its intellectual abilities. True, you should also not refuse music. Study showedthat music has a significant positive effect on the woman itself, reliably reducing the frequency of postpartum depression in mothers.

Most likely not true

What do our verdicts mean?

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