• Question: How do our brains know to expand and contract the muscles in our chests to allow us to breathe when we’re born?

    Asked by Ayrton to Ed, Kerrianne, Nina, Oli, yoyehudi on 13 Nov 2017.
    • Photo: Yo Yehudi

      Yo Yehudi answered on 13 Nov 2017:

      It’s instinct: we’re born knowing how to do it, and we don’t have to do it consciously for it to happen. We need to know some basic things in order to survive long enough to grow older and learn – so that’s why a baby human or other baby mammal knows to suckle milk from its mother when it’s tiny, for example. If it didn’t, it presumably would die as soon as it was born 🙁

    • Photo: Oli Wilson

      Oli Wilson answered on 14 Nov 2017:

      This is a really interesting question, so I looked it up (I’m not a doctor, after all)! I found a really interesting paper which said that going from a foetus to a newborn is ‘the most complex adaptation that occurs in human experience’ – basically the trickiest thing we’ll ever do!
      It seems like we don’t really understand the breathing transition perfectly, but it’s caused by a mix of things, including changes in temperature, being touched, having the umbilical cord clamped, and changes in blood chemistry (especially of oxygen and carbon dioxide). Essentially, Yo’s right – we don’t have to concentrate or think in order to do it, as with breathing in general 🙂
      (The paper’s here if you’re really interested, but I don’t understand lots of it – again, not a doctor… https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3504352/)

    • Photo: Ed Bracey

      Ed Bracey answered on 14 Nov 2017:

      Do you mean how does the baby’s brain know it’s been born and to start it breathing?
      Great question, I’d never thought of this, I’m glad you asked because it made go to find out!
      In the womb the baby uses the placenta to get oxygen from it’s mother’s blood.
      But when it’s born, the placenta doesn’t work any more.
      At that moment, the brain detects the sudden change in the surroundings, for example, the change in temperature.
      There are brain cells deep in our brains in a part called the brain stem.
      The brain stem automatically controls a lot of what we do, but don’t think about, including breathing.
      Lucky for us we don’t have to think about doing it!
      When the baby is born and it detects it’s outside the womb, these cells in the brain stem are activated, causing the baby to start breathing.

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