Waikato University is calling on expectant mums in the region to take part in groundbreaking research that aims to understand for the first time how our eyesight develops in the womb.
There’ve been a lot of auditory studies done on babies prior to birth, but little is known about how a fetus reacts to light, and how the lens of the eye may actually anticipate movement in the third trimester.
“The amount of knowledge we have about vision is almost zero so we are starting from scratch to get an idea of how the fetus sees and what that means about the beginning of vision for humans” said Professor Vincent Reid who has a Marsden Fund grant for his work.
Jess Leov, a PhD Psychology student at Waikato University is building on earlier work by Professor Reid, and collaborating with Martin Necas from Waikato District Health Board.
“The big exciting thing we do know is the womb isn’t dark anymore so if the womb isn’t dark that means light is going on and the fetus can be having a visual experience which means that some sort of visual development could be occurring in utero” said Leov.
Improvements in scanning technology now mean you can easily see the lens of the baby’s eye and that is what Leov and her team are tracking when participants who’re 33-36 weeks pregnant take part.
“We present the light and we are going to see if it will it track that light backwards and forwards.”
“Five or six years ago we could only measure the entire head movement of the fetus. Now we can actually see where the eyes are looking so this is far more accurate and tells us a lot more about how vision really works” said Professor Reid.
Participants hear a loud beep, and a light wand is shone on the pregnant woman’s tummy.
Jess Leov says they’re hoping to learn more about a developing baby’s memory and its ability to anticipate.
“The fetus hears the sound and sees the light. We do this several times and also take away the light. Without the light does the fetus look to that location, if they do and if we see more eye movements even with no light what we could conclude is the fetus is performing an anticipatory eye movement. And that’s really exciting!”
The team hopes to work with up to 100 Waikato women.
As part of the study they will also explore fetal responses to light presented in the periphery (side of the face) when compared with central, front of the face locations. This will indicate which area of the face the fetus prefers to engage with and which parts of the eye are more developed before birth. In babies, presenting an image in the periphery will typically produce a response when a central image will not, so the researchers anticipate that this will be replicated.
Downstream the research could mean a mother with a fetus at risk of congenital blindness for instance, could be offered the diagnostic light scan in order to gain crucial information to prepare for early intervention when the baby is born.
The outcomes of this research will have important implications for developmental science with applications for obstetrics and neonatal care, ensuring that our pēpi babies continue to be born with not just eyesight, but social understanding and vision for the future.
