I'll be brief since I have a lot of things to do.

@MamaOfWill:
DeCasper's paper is actually a seminal paper, showing that newborn younger than 3 days prefers their mother's voice to other's. This is a very old paper and groundbreaking at that time. The significance of the paper that babies start learning very quickly since they were born, quoted as follows:

Thus, within the first 3 days of postnatal development, newborns prefer the human voice, discriminate between speakers, and demonstrate a preference for their mothers' voices only with limited maternal exposure.

The neonate's capacity to rapidly acquire a stimulus discrimination that control behavior (15) could provide the means by which limited postnatal experience with the mother results in preference for her voice. The early preference demonstrated here is possible because newborns have auditory competencies adequate for discriminating individual speakers: they are sensitive to rhythmicity (16), intonation (17), frequency variation (1,13), and phonetic components of speech (18). Their general sensory competency may enable other maternal cues, such as her odor (19) and the manner in which she handles her infant (20), to serve as supporting bases for discrimination and vocal preference.

However:

Prenatal (intrauterine) auditory experience may also be a factor. Although the significance and nature of intrauterine auditory experience in humans is not known, perceptual preferences and proximity-seeking responses of some infrahuman infants are profoundly affected by auditory experience before birth (21).

To me, the last quote shows that this experiment wasn't designed to show prenatal learning (PL) since none was known back then. It was unknown back then how human voice could penetrate the insular womb condition that is full of loud maternal biological noise. Thus, the authors only sought early postnatal learning, if you will. If they really sought to prove PL, they ought to provide another group of infants whose mothers were forbidden to talk or to handle their babies until the experiment was concluded.


@soccermom7573:
I am open to the latest developments. I want to see how prenatal stimuli affect babies either immediately or in longer term. So far, the science is inchoate and it is not even there yet. I do believe that babies can learn from day 1. It has been proven for so many times for a long time already and it is indisputable now. The paper linked by MamaOfWill was published in 1980, which is talking exactly about learning since day 1.

You are entitled to your own opinion. However, I earnestly ask you to not brand any scientifically inclined people as unbeliever since it is simply not true.

So how about thumb sucking before birth?  It is a well known fact that many babies suck their thumbs before they are born.  Sucking might be a reflex, but sticking your thumb into your mouth voluntarily is a learnt behavior.

Sucking is a reflex at the time of birth, but becomes a learned behavior soon afterward since there is a reward (i.e., breast milk) associated with the reflex. Days old babies can be pretty good at learning thumb sucking. So, proving learning through sucking reflex greatly weaken PL argument.

[has not been reliably confirmed as a method for the fetus]

@soccermom7573:

Where is the proof that Baby Plus is harmful?

The evidence is purely anecdotal---Scan over Amazon's negative reviews. Consistent autism reports, which might have some merit. Some deafness reports appear to have been deleted now. I am not saying that these reports are believable---everything has to be investigated. However, when you see dozens of similar reports, they may indicate something. This is why I said "could".

You state music and meditation has little to no help towards an unborn baby, and then say that it does? Yor opinions keep opposing each other. Therefore I think is the trouble we are all having with trying to understand what you are truly saying.

I have been saying that there's little to no support of prenatal music or meditation to the baby (but there may be sizable benefit to the mom). When you read dozens of articles on, say prenatal music exposure, and found half supports and the other half contradicts PL, what do you conclude? Especially so, when the paper I quoted above said "it is methodologically complex, has not been reliably confirmed as a method for the fetus, is non-physiological, and has been reported to occur in anenchepalic fetuses 2."

You talk about baby plus one second and then the concept of prenatal learning.

I am talking about both. Baby Plus is absurd. The concept of prenatal learning is absurd until it is proven otherwise, given the many difficulties, as the scientific paper I referenced says (and a lot more).

@MamaOfWill:

So you've fine combed the entire internet on this topic, every language, all restricted documents and also went back in time just to check on the Egyptians and Mayans did you?  That's wonderful!  I hope (for your part) that you've not been doing your research the same way as you've been reading posts here because that would mean you've wasted a lot of your time.  (You can do a lot of research on any given topic and still only cover a fraction, so one should be careful when assuming you know all of any given subject)

When you do research, you survey a sizable portion of *recent* articles (say, within the last 10 years or even newer). These articles *will* reference (a sizable amount of) older articles and summarize them to show that these authors do know their field and are not claiming things out of the blue. Such summaries are adequate most of the times and thereby saving the time of the researchers that come after these authors. The reference to older articles are useful to pull out details, whenever necessary. There is another class of scientific paper called "review papers" which summarizes ALL knowledge of the topic so far. There are review articles published every 2-3 year (depending on the field). So, you don't need to read absolutely everything. Just a good sampling and it will do. After all, PL is unlike archaeology, so no need to read ancient documents.

I already offered you the scientific articles I based my opinions on and you offered none. I am not sure why you are claiming me making hasty assumptions.

What is the point of copy-and-pasting parts of a thread now again?

Let's use Wiki's definition of "learning":

Learning is acquiring new, or modifying and reinforcing, existing knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information.

The major problem with demonstrating prenatal learning results in infants is mainly what to measure since infants can't speak (or express the results of learning) just yet. Is difference sucking pattern learning? Or is it heart rate? Or EEG pattern? If the patterns are consistent, then we should see replications across the majority of the studies. But sadly, not the case. Realizing this difficulty, we should then obtain measures on the organ where most learning occurs: brain. EEG is one good option. I could imagine fMRI or other imaging techniques.

Edit: For abstracts, go here: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/08/14/1302159110

[We have not examined whether this effect is specific to this stimulus or sound exposure in general. Furthermore, there is no information that such effects are either long lasting or beneficial. Most of the evidence that we have on prebirth experiences affecting later childhood or adulthood is anecdotal, unscientific, and based on subjective interpretation.]

Prior to coming to this forum, I was already aware about the music and speech (and other) stimulation from the news since a long time now (year 2000-ish?). As I dug deeper in the actual scientific articles whenever some news popped up, I usually found the scientific support of such stimulation to be lacking or tenuous. I knew conditions of the womb, plus PL or even prenatal stimulation would be extremely hard to prove, if at all possible. So, it is not that I was not doing "a fraction of the homework"---I do not believe oversensationalized reports of popular science or blogs, I go to the article directly to read what the authors actually claim.

I came across this PL forum and was quite surprised to see commercial products for PL. At that time, discussions of two products popped up: BabyPlus and HeGuru. BabyPlus claimed "25 years of research"---this is bogus. 25 years of research on things that are "within our reach" would imply mature research, which is absolutely not the case. So, I decided to read again over 30 scientific articles on PL or prenatal stimulation at that moment and basically found none substantive. A vast majority of the papers are things related to substance abuse (alcohol, tobacco, narcotics) or stress / depression-related or animal trials (rats, mice). Go search and you'll see. No clinical trials. Nothing. I know plenty of articles confirming good exercise and nutrition are beneficial to baby's learning experience, but no substantive PL paper (until yesterday).

Let's look at a representative paper that I read back then (a 2002 paper). Here's a relevant quote, that neatly sums up the field back then:

Research into fetal learning is difficult. ... The majority of the studies of fetal learning have used some form of acoustic stimulation. However, there are wide methodological variations in the acoustic frequency and volume of the stimulus used, the exposure protocols, and whether the sound source was applied directly to the maternal abdomen or in the environment. All these variables can influence the amount and quality of the sound reaching the fetus and thus its effects 22,23.
...
There have been two reports of studies describing classical conditioning in the human fetus using vibroacoustic stimulation 31. In the first, only one subject was used and no data were given. In the second, whilst classical conditioning was demonstrated, others have been unable to reproduce the response 2. More recently maternal relaxation (US) and music (CS) have been reported to produce fetal conditioning after more than 20 prenatal exposures. In the newborn the CS induced a quiet awake state in conditioned fetuses 32. We chose not to use this approach in our studies because it is methodologically complex, has not been reliably confirmed as a method for the fetus, is non-physiological, and has been reported to occur in anenchepalic fetuses 2.
...
We have not examined whether this effect is specific to this stimulus or sound exposure in general. Furthermore, there is no information that such effects are either long lasting or beneficial. Most of the evidence that we have on prebirth experiences affecting later childhood or adulthood is anecdotal, unscientific, and based on subjective interpretation. Future properly designed prospective randomized control studies should involve long-term follow-up of subjects and controls to examine the duration of such effects and their benefit or harm.

(my emphasis)

Table 5 of this paper summarizes 10 studies, saying 1 "yes", 1 contradictory, and 8 "no" or "unknown" in the  "Demonstrated fetal response" column. Out of these 10, only 2 declared neonatal learning possible, but only 1 of them [which is this paper] use a real randomized prospective study.

Sadly enough, this paper's results are weak. However, I agree with the authors' last paragraph (that I quoted above). Remember that this is a 2002 paper. To my surprise, however, after some search, I found this paragraph remains true.

Yes, surely you can prove trivial negative statements and logic or math statements, but nobody could be capable of taking individual (scientific) claims and disproving such claims. Let's take, for example, "hypertension cannot be a cause of traffic accident"---it's a negative statement. We've got data from millions of traffic accidents, but no reports so far (at least, not that I know of) specify "hypertension" as the cause of death. I doubt that we could even prove such statement even if we have 1 billion more traffic accident data points. One could hypothesize that hypertension causes stroke on the road or road rage that leads to death, but nobody link hypertension to traffic accidents.

Now, if your definition of learning is "something that affects neural wiring", there you got your point, especially so proven in the paper I linked. However, stroke, hallucination, nightmare, trauma, and many others also may affect neural wiring (and new memory too), but they're not learning.

@SkyLark: Fair enough.

The points I need to get across is: If prenatal learning were real, why commercial products like BabyPlus had to fake their "scientific paper"? And calling it "after 25 years of research"? What?!

Prior to the paper I just reviewed, there's only conflicting and superficial evidence about it. For example: Prenatal music---some evidence says good, some bad. The sample sizes are typically small and the end measure is somewhat iffy and tend to be qualitative, like the frequency of sucking or "being a happy baby". I rarely see papers mentioning experiments with brain-related measurements, like EEG or fMRI, or more objective and quantitative measures, even. Even then, when there's some, the control is insufficient. The problem with music stimulation experiments is that there is no distinction that the music benefits the baby directly or through his mother. We are pretty clear that mother's womb is an insular environment and is pretty secluded from external stimuli. Hence, a lot of people would think that the music treatment affects mom's mood more than the baby. We also know that mom's mood affect baby's mood and good mood positively correlates with baby learning. But calling prenatal music stimulation as "learning" is a huge stretch. The same goes with meditation, etc. Hence, my conclusion.

On the other hand, the paper I referred to above made direct links between neural changes and external stimuli and offer some suggestive evidence on learning. However, it is still unclear what the neural changes mean and what scope it entails. I think it is a worthy follow up. It is a very recent paper (published Aug 26, 2013). I'm pretty sure that follow up studies will ensue soon after.

Queriquita brought to my attention a very recent paper (published online before print @ Aug 26, 2013) that connects external stimuli to prenatal learning. This is the first paper that I know of that offer some substantive evidence of prenatal learning with a good experiment design, though the sample size is pretty small (17 treatment, 16 control).

What it is: Prenatal stimulation using audio (2 segments of ~4 min each) of pseudowords (tatata, ta^tata [pitch change], tatota [vowel change]) @ 167-177 Hz, each of which are played hundreds of times in each segment. The stimulation was done at 29 weeks old (which is good since the auditory organs are already well developed). Relatively good control, no aberration, health or hearing problems in mothers or babies.

Testing evidence: EEG signal in 9 channels measured at 1-27 days old while sleeping, on 4 categories: pitch changes, vowel changes, vowel duration, and vowel intensity. Note that only the first two were "taught" prenatally.

Result: Prenatally stimulated babies show greater spikes of signal for these 4 categories, indicative of "learning" since the last two categories were not "taught". Control experiment rules out auditory sensitivity factor.

Comment: The p-value (i.e., the probability that the occurrence is more than a random chance) for the "learning" part is still somewhat in a suggestive range (0.01-0.05), with some that are actually pretty good. So, I would consider that the evidence is substantive, but not definitive. It certainly needs a good follow up. For sure this is not some randomly-chosen rhythm like BabyPlus had suggested and definitely not done at 18 week gestational age!

What is very interesting to me is that the EEG channel that shows the most response is C4, which is roughly on the right side of precentral gyrus (which is traditionally linked to motoric ability). This is somewhat hard to interpret what the stimulation means to the brain. The precentral gyrus can be activated by passive listening of speech, which may be the case for this experiment. Had it been the Pars opercularis part of the frontal lobe, which is responsible for speech-language development and the anomaly in which has been associated with autism, it would have been easier. Could it be that C4 is also picking up signals from Pars opercularis? Maybe. I need to consult with EEG experts on this.

This study simply shows that the neural connectivity of the brain is changed due to external vocal stimuli. Whether this changes are good or bad or are indicative of real learning is unknown.

Respectfully I have to disagree with a couple of things you said Robbyjo. Meditation and music isn't just for babies comfort but mothers as well. You may be able to say "Scientific" all you want but babies are miracles from God and there is no science involves with a bond between mother and babies, born or unborn. Babies will respond to mother and fathers voices in the womb. My daughter responded to both of our voices when I was juts 5-6 months pregnant. At birth, every time we talked and she was awake she would turn straight to us, because she knew our voices.

I listened to gospel music and country music practically everyday of my pregnancy, and my husband and I sang songs as well. Even now, if there is gospel music or country music on, our daughter immediately relaxes, coos along with it and even relaxes enough to fall asleep to it at times.

You say there is no scientific way about bonding.....that's because not everything can be explained with science. The bond between a mother and a child has been present long before science ever was.

the scientific sound to "improve" the condition of your baby is through health and exercise....really. Yes ofcourse, eating healthy and exercising PROPERLY ONLY WHAT YOU'RE ABLE TO DO WITHOUT OVER DOING IT AND UNDER CONDITIONS OF A DOCTOR are healthy for an unborn baby. However, that is not all a baby needs is it.

Not believing in prenatal education, but you believe in science correct? So science has come and has even proven with ultrasounds that babies in the womb learn to grasp, suck their thumb at times, kick, breath, etc, Even if babies do not learn  in the womb how to count because there is no "scientific data" does not mean they are unable to do so. They listen to their mothers voice and the voices that are constantly around. They feel the touch of a hand on their mothers belly. And there is most certainly that bond between mothers and children in the womb and out.

Firstly, I think you need to reread my comments: Nowhere did I say that music and mediation do not benefit the mothers. What I do object is "prenatal learning", which I think is absurd.

Secondly, your comment sounds like that it is either science or God, which implies that there is no godly scientist on earth. This is a false dichotomy. It is a very clear stance on your earlier post that got deleted. I hope you stop making such comments.

Thirdly, maternal bond is so far proven on the emotional health of the babies and the moms. There is some smattering evidence scientific that this is the case. However, nothing is known on the education front. Granted, emotional balance can propel learning, but that's a different story.

Fourthly, auditory organ is complete by 26-28 weeks (which means 6 months). Babies may respond to external voice or stimuli. However, calling it "learning" is a huge stretch.

Fifthly, let's say that science later can "prove" prenatal learning. Follow up questions still remain: What is the advantage academically vs. those who do not have such learning? What scope is the advantage? Which methods are beneficial? The existing "learning" hold the potential to harm the fetus.

That said, it is up to the parents to do meditation, music, or whatever approach. I think parents do have the rights to know what has been scientifically proven or not. To me, anecdotal evidence does not hold sway since I cannot ascertain that it is not a random chance.

First of all, science can never prove a negative statement---the best that science can do is that the statement is not shown to be positive after empirical evidence of many samples (say, 100,000+). Practically speaking, it is a strong statement for the negative. For example, science can never disprove the existence of an invisible pink unicorn.

I sincerely believe that devices that can affect fetal well-being have to be FDA regulated. Why? There are some anecdotal evidence that such devices could do permanent damage, such as permanent hearing loss or autism (see Amazon reviews). This is not about entrepreneurial spirit---this is about the society's well being. Misrepresentation of evidence that could do permanent damage has to be absolutely curtailed. Thus, I would rather see such devices pass a clinical trial. Moreover, if we don't require clinical trial, any con artists could "invent" a whizbang device with fantastic claims and any gullible well-meaning parents are going to swallow it whole.

I am, for one, will not believe any claims without substantive evidence, especially the fake evidence offered by BabyPlus. It is an affront to scientifically minded people. I want to see at least some evidence, as indicative in my first post. So, there is no change in my tone.

The concept of prenatal learning is still ridiculous given the conditions in the womb. Firstly, the major source of learning, if at all is happening, it is going to be through the hearing. We know that fetal hearing is developed by 26-27 week of pregnancy (or Gestational Age / GA). So, before then, learning could hardly happen. Look at BabyPlus's FAQ; they recommended the learning from 18 weeks of pregnancy (GA). While I understand that some babies could develop hearing early, but 18 week GA is pure rubbish! Mother's heartbeat and breathing sound is at 70-110db, and that's very loud. It would be very hard to learn under that kind of noise. Plus, external voice will be greatly muffled in the womb---external voice is attenuated by 5-50db (5db for low voice, 20-30db for high voice, and up to 50db for vocal-range voice). Yes, so low voice could still be heard (given 5 db attenuation), but not vocal range or even above. Even low voice that is strong enough to penetrate the womb "infrastructure" could induce permanent hearing loss due to its energy levels. So, there's my evidence.

There are lots to be discovered and I am definitely interested in learning a lot further about this idea. I have no doubt that babies could have capacities to learn.

One question....you mention that "we must find out the physical explanation to advance our understanding about what is behind the scene... Then why were you so swift at first to deny that unborn babies have the ability to learn?

I did not deny that unborn babies have the ability to learn. Read my comment carefully. The womb environment simply muffled the external stimuli that it is doubtful that unborn babies could learn from the external stimuli. Plus, there is no scientific evidence either. Therefore, it is highly unethical to commercialize any prenatal learning products---at least not yet.

There have been lots of studies supporting prenatal learning connected to language and musical memory.

@MamaOfWill: Please show me just one real scientific paper (not some pop-sci / blog) that show this connection with some decent sample size (n >= 20, preferably) of real humans. As of the writing of my first post, I could not find anything close to that. I recall that these studies were relatively recent and the samples are very small (n=5-10) and usually on animals (chicks, mice, rats) instead of humans. As such, these papers are published in not so respectable journals.

The problem with prenatal learning is: Although babies are pre-programmed to learn with their senses, their senses are greatly muffled in the womb. If there is a device that can penetrate this muffler and teach the baby something, the baby's organs may be in danger since they may not be ready to receive external stimulation---especially if the stimulation is so strong so as to penetrate the muffling of the womb. With muffled senses, it is hard to learn anything, even for adults.

Now, I understand that prenatal "learning" is still subject of research. There might be some learning going on in the womb after all. We don't know just yet about the magnitude or scope and we need to find out more---way beyond anecdotal evidence. If the field itself is still inchoate, no commercial product should show up and exploit parental affection. That is highly unethical. If reported to the FDA, they're toast.

The wonderful Big bang theory....first of all it's in the name..THEORY...

Big Bang or other evolution may not be directly testable by way of intervention due to the time span (billions of years). However, prenatal learning is something that is well under our reach to test---and so far I am not seeing any meaningful results yet.

Yes, I am well aware of Psalm 139:13-16 that you are referring to. Yes, I agree that babies are miracles. However, it does not mean we ought to stop right there at the Bible. We must find out the physical explanation to advance our understanding about what is behind the scene.

@soccermom7573 and Skylark: Prenatal bonding does not equal to prenatal learning. Prenatal bonding is shown to be beneficial to the baby. For example, this paper. If you read at Baby Plus's claims and the alleged paper, I'm sure your huge red flag will be raised in no time.

Relevant: http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED019107

Children who read early: Two longitudinal studies

The extension of the concept of readiness into education earlier in this century resulted in studies which concluded that children are not ready to read until a mental age of 6.5. But actual research on preschool reading was, as of 1957, extremely limited. Two longitudinal studies were undertaken to remedy this lack. Both studies sought to determine the percentage of preschool readers entering the first grade, the effect of this ability on later reading achievement, and factors which promoted this ability. The first study, begun in September 1958, was based on a sample drawn from 5,103 first graders in Oakland, California. In this group were found 49 prereaders, or less than 1 percent. These 49 were given IQ tests and were tested for reading achievement each year until 1964. The families were interviewed to determine their socioeconomic background, the personality characteristics of the early readers, and the way in which the early reading ability developed. The second study, started in September 1961, tested 4,465 New York City first graders and found 156 early readers, or about 3-1/2 percent. A special group of 30 nonearly readers was matched on sex and IQ with a group of 30 prereaders. Much the same kinds of data were gathered in this study as in the first. Some general conclusions drawn from these studies were (1) that pessimistic opinions about the effects of early reading were not corroborated, and (2) that the early and nonearly reading children were not markedly dissimilar. However, early readers tended to come from families that were more willing to help children learn to read. The findings of these studies also suggest that kindergarten programs should assist and encourage those children who wish to learn to read. Case studies of some prereaders in both studies and some nonearly readers of the New York study are included. This document is available for $4.25 from Teachers College Press, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York 10027.

So, do you have a formal research proposal ready to show us? Is it going to be a dissertation?

Oh wow. What to say about Barwegen, et al. (B&al, for short) article? I agree with Sandra Martin-Chang, et al. that B&al's article is an invalid comparison between homeschooled vs. regular-schooled children due to many problems plaguing the evidently landmark paper.

First major problem: B&al did not send any questionnaires to the homeschooled students and the data that they used to compare homeschooled vs. regular-schooled children are data supposedly reported on ACT Enrollment Information Service (ACT EIS) for 2002, which were obtained thorough personal communication with C. Parmaly (page 49). Data obtained through personal communication is a huge red flag in science. Moreover, B&al. did not even bother to describe the demographics of ACT EIS data, which is very crucial to see if that data is comparable to the population they sent their questionnaires to. On top of that, the questionnaire reported in ACT EIS---a crucial element they themselves elaborated in the Review section: Do the questions really matter? What is/are the questions? Are they comparable to the questionnaires they are studying? There is also a major statistical problem in that part of the methodology (one-sample t-test; Really? Why? Shouldn't it be at least a paired t-test stratified with income, race, and other confounding factors?).

Second major problem: B&al. did not even bother to validate the questionnaire. They should at least show their Cronbach's alpha figure to show some internal consistency. Firstly, I really was dumbfounded to see how different the parents' and the students' responses are in Table 3. Secondly, because there are huge disparities in the number of samples between students (n=127) vs. parents (n=23). Thirdly, how else did the authors ascertain that the answers are really valid? The complete questionnaire is not even available as an appendix.

So, given all these problems, the section "Comparisons of Public School Students and Homeschool Students" (pages 49-50 and 52-53) should be struck down as invalid. Since their (B&al's) conclusion #3 (pages 54-55) depends on this section, it's also invalid. All this paper does is confirming that high parental participation is associated with better academic performance, with some finer elements detailing the kinds of participation that matters.

Regarding some of the good points raised up in the paper (the kinds of participation that matters): We should take them with some grain of salt. From experience, I know that self-rating is notoriously unreliable. Though there is some utility (see their "Study Limitations" in page 45), I wouldn't completely trust it, even more so since B&al. didn't even bother to validate their questionnaires.