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My subject today is learning.

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And in that spirit, I want to spring on you all a pop quiz.

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Ready?

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When does learning begin?

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Now as you ponder that question,

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maybe you're thinking about the first day of preschool

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or kindergarten,

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the first time that kids are in a classroom with a teacher.

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Or maybe you've called to mind the toddler phase

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when children are learning how to walk and talk

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and use a fork.

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Maybe you've encountered the Zero-to-Three movement,

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which asserts that the most important years for learning

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are the earliest ones.

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And so your answer to my question would be:

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Learning begins at birth.

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Well today I want to present to you

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an idea that may be surprising

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and may even seem implausible,

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but which is supported by the latest evidence

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from psychology and biology.

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And that is that some of the most important learning we ever do

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happens before we're born,

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while we're still in the womb.

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Now I'm a science reporter.

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I write books and magazine articles.

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And I'm also a mother.

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And those two roles came together for me

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in a book that I wrote called "Origins."

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"Origins" is a report from the front lines

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of an exciting new field

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called fetal origins.

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Fetal origins is a scientific discipline

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that emerged just about two decades ago,

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and it's based on the theory

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that our health and well-being throughout our lives

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is crucially affected

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by the nine months we spend in the womb.

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Now this theory was of more than just intellectual interest to me.

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I was myself pregnant

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while I was doing the research for the book.

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And one of the most fascinating insights

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I took from this work

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is that we're all learning about the world

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even before we enter it.

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When we hold our babies for the first time,

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we might imagine that they're clean slates,

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unmarked by life,

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when in fact, they've already been shaped by us

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and by the particular world we live in.

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Today I want to share with you some of the amazing things

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that scientists are discovering

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about what fetuses learn

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while they're still in their mothers' bellies.

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First of all,

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they learn the sound of their mothers' voices.

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Because sounds from the outside world

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have to travel through the mother's abdominal tissue

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and through the amniotic fluid that surrounds the fetus,

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the voices fetuses hear,

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starting around the fourth month of gestation,

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are muted and muffled.

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One researcher says

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that they probably sound a lot like the the voice of Charlie Brown's teacher

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in the old "Peanuts" cartoon.

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But the pregnant woman's own voice

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reverberates through her body,

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reaching the fetus much more readily.

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And because the fetus is with her all the time,

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it hears her voice a lot.

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Once the baby's born, it recognizes her voice

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and it prefers listening to her voice

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over anyone else's.

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How can we know this?

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Newborn babies can't do much,

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but one thing they're really good at is sucking.

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Researchers take advantage of this fact

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by rigging up two rubber nipples,

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so that if a baby sucks on one,

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it hears a recording of its mother's voice

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on a pair of headphones,

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and if it sucks on the other nipple,

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it hears a recording of a female stranger's voice.

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Babies quickly show their preference

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by choosing the first one.

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Scientists also take advantage of the fact

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that babies will slow down their sucking

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when something interests them

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and resume their fast sucking

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when they get bored.

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This is how researchers discovered

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that, after women repeatedly read aloud

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a section of Dr. Seuss' "The Cat in the Hat" while they were pregnant,

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their newborn babies recognized that passage

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when they hear it outside the womb.

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My favorite experiment of this kind

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is the one that showed that the babies

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of women who watched a certain soap opera

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every day during pregnancy

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recognized the theme song of that show

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once they were born.

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So fetuses are even learning

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about the particular language that's spoken

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in the world that they'll be born into.

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A study published last year

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found that from birth, from the moment of birth,

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babies cry in the accent

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of their mother's native language.

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French babies cry on a rising note

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while German babies end on a falling note,

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imitating the melodic contours

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of those languages.

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Now why would this kind of fetal learning

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be useful?

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It may have evolved to aid the baby's survival.

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From the moment of birth,

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the baby responds most to the voice

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of the person who is most likely to care for it --

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its mother.

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It even makes its cries

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sound like the mother's language,

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which may further endear the baby to the mother,

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and which may give the baby a head start

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in the critical task

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of learning how to understand and speak

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its native language.

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But it's not just sounds

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that fetuses are learning about in utero.

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It's also tastes and smells.

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By seven months of gestation,

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the fetus' taste buds are fully developed,

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and its olfactory receptors, which allow it to smell,

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are functioning.

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The flavors of the food a pregnant woman eats

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find their way into the amniotic fluid,

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which is continuously swallowed

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by the fetus.

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Babies seem to remember and prefer these tastes

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once they're out in the world.

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In one experiment, a group of pregnant women

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was asked to drink a lot of carrot juice

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during their third trimester of pregnancy,

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while another group of pregnant women

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drank only water.

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Six months later, the women's infants

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were offered cereal mixed with carrot juice,

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and their facial expressions were observed while they ate it.

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The offspring of the carrot juice drinking women

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ate more carrot-flavored cereal,

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and from the looks of it,

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they seemed to enjoy it more.

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A sort of French version of this experiment

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was carried out in Dijon, France

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where researchers found

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that mothers who consumed food and drink

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flavored with licorice-flavored anise during pregnancy

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showed a preference for anise

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on their first day of life,

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and again, when they were tested later,

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on their fourth day of life.

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Babies whose mothers did not eat anise during pregnancy

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showed a reaction that translated roughly as "yuck."

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What this means

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is that fetuses are effectively being taught by their mothers

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about what is safe and good to eat.

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Fetuses are also being taught

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about the particular culture that they'll be joining

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through one of culture's most powerful expressions,

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which is food.

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They're being introduced to the characteristic flavors and spices

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of their culture's cuisine

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even before birth.

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Now it turns out that fetuses are learning even bigger lessons.

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But before I get to that,

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I want to address something that you may be wondering about.

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The notion of fetal learning

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may conjure up for you attempts to enrich the fetus --

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like playing Mozart through headphones

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placed on a pregnant belly.

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But actually, the nine-month-long process

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of molding and shaping that goes on in the womb

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is a lot more visceral and consequential than that.

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Much of what a pregnant woman encounters in her daily life --

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the air she breathes,

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the food and drink she consumes,

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the chemicals she's exposed to,

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even the emotions she feels --

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are shared in some fashion with her fetus.

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They make up a mix of influences

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as individual and idiosyncratic

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as the woman herself.

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The fetus incorporates these offerings

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into its own body,

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makes them part of its flesh and blood.

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And often it does something more.

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It treats these maternal contributions

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as information,

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as what I like to call biological postcards

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from the world outside.

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So what a fetus is learning about in utero

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is not Mozart's "Magic Flute"

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but answers to questions much more critical to its survival.

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Will it be born into a world of abundance

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or scarcity?

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Will it be safe and protected,

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or will it face constant dangers and threats?

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Will it live a long, fruitful life

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or a short, harried one?

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The pregnant woman's diet and stress level in particular

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provide important clues to prevailing conditions

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like a finger lifted to the wind.

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The resulting tuning and tweaking

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of a fetus' brain and other organs

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are part of what give us humans

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our enormous flexibility,

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our ability to thrive

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in a huge variety of environments,

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from the country to the city,

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from the tundra to the desert.

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To conclude, I want to tell you two stories

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about how mothers teach their children about the world

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even before they're born.

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In the autumn of 1944,

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the darkest days of World War II,

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German troops blockaded Western Holland,

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turning away all shipments of food.

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The opening of the Nazi's siege

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was followed by one of the harshest winters in decades --

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so cold the water in the canals froze solid.

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Soon food became scarce,

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with many Dutch surviving on just 500 calories a day --

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a quarter of what they consumed before the war.

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As weeks of deprivation stretched into months,

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some resorted to eating tulip bulbs.

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By the beginning of May,

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the nation's carefully rationed food reserve

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was completely exhausted.

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The specter of mass starvation loomed.

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And then on May 5th, 1945,

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the siege came to a sudden end

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when Holland was liberated

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by the Allies.

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The "Hunger Winter," as it came to be known,

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killed some 10,000 people

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and weakened thousands more.

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But there was another population that was affected --

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the 40,000 fetuses

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in utero during the siege.

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Some of the effects of malnutrition during pregnancy

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were immediately apparent

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in higher rates of stillbirths,

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birth defects, low birth weights

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and infant mortality.

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But others wouldn't be discovered for many years.

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Decades after the "Hunger Winter,"

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researchers documented

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that people whose mothers were pregnant during the siege

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have more obesity, more diabetes

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and more heart disease in later life

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than individuals who were gestated under normal conditions.

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These individuals' prenatal experience of starvation

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seems to have changed their bodies

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in myriad ways.

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They have higher blood pressure,

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poorer cholesterol profiles

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and reduced glucose tolerance --

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a precursor of diabetes.

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Why would undernutrition in the womb

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result in disease later?

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One explanation

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is that fetuses are making the best of a bad situation.

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When food is scarce,

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they divert nutrients towards the really critical organ, the brain,

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and away from other organs

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like the heart and liver.

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This keeps the fetus alive in the short-term,

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but the bill comes due later on in life

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when those other organs, deprived early on,

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become more susceptible to disease.

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But that may not be all that's going on.

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It seems that fetuses are taking cues

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from the intrauterine environment

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and tailoring their physiology accordingly.

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They're preparing themselves

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for the kind of world they will encounter

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on the other side of the womb.

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The fetus adjusts its metabolism

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and other physiological processes

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in anticipation of the environment that awaits it.

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And the basis of the fetus' prediction

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is what its mother eats.

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The meals a pregnant woman consumes

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constitute a kind of story,

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a fairy tale of abundance

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or a grim chronicle of deprivation.

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This story imparts information

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that the fetus uses

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to organize its body and its systems --

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an adaptation to prevailing circumstances

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that facilitates its future survival.

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Faced with severely limited resources,

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a smaller-sized child with reduced energy requirements

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will, in fact, have a better chance

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of living to adulthood.

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The real trouble comes

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when pregnant women are, in a sense, unreliable narrators,

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when fetuses are led

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to expect a world of scarcity

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and are born instead into a world of plenty.

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This is what happened to the children of the Dutch "Hunger Winter."

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And their higher rates of obesity,

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diabetes and heart disease

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are the result.

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Bodies that were built to hang onto every calorie

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found themselves swimming in the superfluous calories

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of the post-war Western diet.

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The world they had learned about while in utero

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was not the same

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as the world into which they were born.

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Here's another story.

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At 8:46 a.m. on September 11th, 2001,

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there were tens of thousands of people

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in the vicinity of the World Trade Center

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in New York --

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commuters spilling off trains,

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waitresses setting tables for the morning rush,

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brokers already working the phones on Wall Street.

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1,700 of these people were pregnant women.

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When the planes struck and the towers collapsed,

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many of these women experienced the same horrors

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inflicted on other survivors of the disaster --

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the overwhelming chaos and confusion,

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the rolling clouds

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of potentially toxic dust and debris,

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the heart-pounding fear for their lives.

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About a year after 9/11,

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researchers examined a group of women

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who were pregnant

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when they were exposed to the World Trade Center attack.

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In the babies of those women

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who developed post-traumatic stress syndrome, or PTSD,

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following their ordeal,

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researchers discovered a biological marker

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of susceptibility to PTSD --

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an effect that was most pronounced

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in infants whose mothers experienced the catastrophe

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in their third trimester.

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In other words,

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the mothers with post-traumatic stress syndrome

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had passed on a vulnerability to the condition

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to their children while they were still in utero.

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Now consider this:

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post-traumatic stress syndrome

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appears to be a reaction to stress gone very wrong,

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causing its victims tremendous unnecessary suffering.

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But there's another way of thinking about PTSD.

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What looks like pathology to us

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may actually be a useful adaptation

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in some circumstances.

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In a particularly dangerous environment,

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the characteristic manifestations of PTSD --

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a hyper-awareness of one's surroundings,

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a quick-trigger response to danger --

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could save someone's life.

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The notion that the prenatal transmission of PTSD risk is adaptive

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is still speculative,

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but I find it rather poignant.

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It would mean that, even before birth,

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mothers are warning their children

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that it's a wild world out there,

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telling them, "Be careful."

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Let me be clear.

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Fetal origins research is not about blaming women

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for what happens during pregnancy.

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It's about discovering how best to promote

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the health and well-being of the next generation.

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That important effort must include a focus

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on what fetuses learn

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during the nine months they spend in the womb.

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Learning is one of life's most essential activities,

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and it begins much earlier

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than we ever imagined.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)