He Thought, She Thought

So you’re pregnant. And it’s your 20 week appointment. You know, the ultrasound one where you finally get to find out if you are having a boy or girl. What you cannot see on the monitor is the major effect the gender of your baby is having on his or her brain.

It’s a boy!
We all know that there are two halves of the brain. But how do the two sides “talk” to each other? Through the corpus callosum, the pipeline of 300 million fibers that connects the right and left sides of your brain.

About halfway through your pregnancy, your baby boy’s brain experiences a testosterone wash, which causes portions of the corpus callosum to shrink. The concentration of testosterone produced by your little one’s testicles is comparable to that of young adult men!

By the time you are 26 weeks along, this testosterone binds to the brain tissue and has permanently transformed it. So, if you did another ultrasound (with a tech who knew what to look for), you could actually distinguish a female brain from a male brain!

It’s a girl!
Interestingly enough, the opposite happens if you are having a girl. When the corpus collosum is exposed to estrogen, the estrogen causes more connections to grow. Her corpus collosum is made up entirely of “white matter”. White matter coordinates how well brain regions work together. (As a side note, female brains have 9.5 times as much white matter as male brains do. ) Is this why women are generally better at multi-tasking?

It’s a musician!
The front portion of the corpus callosum has been reported to be significantly larger in musicians than non-musicians. (Unabashed promoting of Kindermusik class using scientific reasoning…)

So, having two boys myself (and thinking their shrunken corpus collosums could use all the help they could get), I was tickled to learn “baby brain exercises” in my Kindermusik Village that activate and integrate both sides of the brain. These fun and simple exercises cross the midline of the body, which helps develop the corpus colossum. This strengthens communication between the two hemispheres.

Congrats! Your baby has arrived!
With your baby in a comfortable position, on a blanket or your lap, chant or sing your favorite nursery rhyme several times, doing the motions with each line. Repeat four times, changing the motion each time.

Hickory, dickory dock,
The mouse ran up the clock.
The clock struck one,
The mouse ran down,
Hickory dickory dock.

First time: Raise his arms together, up and down.
Second time: Raise her legs together, up and down.
Third time: touch his left hand to his right foot.
Fourth time: touch her right hand to her left foot.

-posted by Miss Analiisa, who wonders if these exercises would work on grown-up boys…