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A question about pre-natal hearing



Dear List,

I was looking around for literature describing the intra-uterine sound environment of unborn fetuses and came across this paper
http://journals.lww.com/greenjournal/abstract/1992/08000/sound_levels_in_the_human_uterus.6.aspx
which suggests that sound in the uterus - if measured with a hydrophone - is essentially unattenuated relative to the source of air born sound and shows apparently no low-passing. That would suggest that sound in utero is essentially crystal clear and not "muffled" as one might perhaps intuitively suspect. However, as I was pondering this I wondered: what about the middle ear of unborn children? Are they filled with (amniotic?) fluid? Or with air? And does it matter? How good could we expect the cochlea in the unborn to be at picking up sound from the amniotic fluid, and does that depend on whether the middle ear is fluid or air filled?

Best wishes,

Jan
 

--
Prof Jan Schnupp
University of Oxford
Dept. of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics
Sherrington Building - Parks Road
Oxford OX1 3PT - UK
+44-1865-282012
http://jan.schnupp.net