After Birth

Summary

Radiolab - "After Birth"

Date: August 25, 2009
Hosts: Jad Abumrad
Guest: Charles Fernyhough (Developmental Psychologist, Durham University)

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Episode Overview

In this episode of Radiolab, host Jad Abumrad dives into the mysterious world of infant consciousness and perception. Prompted by the experience of fatherhood, he seeks to answer an age-old question: What is the world like for a brand-new baby? To explore this, Jad speaks with Charles Fernyhough, a psychologist and author, about what science reveals—and cannot reveal—about the sensations, mind, and emerging interactions of newborns.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Inspiration: Encountering the Mystery of Baby Consciousness

• Jad describes watching his two-month-old son Emil intently staring at him, raising fundamental questions about what such a new human experiences.
  • “What is this little creature experiencing? ...What does the world look like to a tiny baby? What does it smell like? What does it sound like?” —Jad Abumrad [04:40]

2. Visual Perception in Infants

• Babies' Eyes See the World Brighter

  • Charles explains that a newborn’s eye lens is “absolutely crystal clear,” unlike adults’ slightly yellowed lenses that filter some blue light.
    • “One difference that does relate to their visual system is that the lens of their eye is absolutely crystal clear...They filter out some of the blue frequencies of the light that we see.” —Charles Fernyhough [06:32]
  • He uses an evocative analogy for how the world may appear to a baby:
    • “Imagine being in a Greek village in the summer at noon ... everything is white ... you suddenly take off those sunglasses ... It’s that bright.” —Charles Fernyhough [07:03]

• Commentary from Jad:

  • “That blinding haze of whiteness might actually be how the world really is. We just don’t see it.” —Jad Abumrad [07:29]

3. Auditory Perception: Babies Hear Echoes

• Infants Experience Sounds Differently
  • Babies' brains don’t yet filter out echoes, so they may experience a more echoey world.
    • “The echoes are actually there, but our brains filter them out. But it takes some time for them to learn to do that...A newborn baby's hearing, we guess ... is in a very echoey way.” —Charles Fernyhough [07:49]

4. Brain Function & Sensory Development

• Unusual Cross-Talk in the Newborn Brain

  • Charles describes a study in which babies' brains did not always process stimuli in the conventional way. Sometimes, a visual image would activate the “auditory cortex,” suggesting cross-wiring and mixed processing.
    • “Sometimes when they showed them, say, a cross, the vision part would be silent, but they’d see a spark in the auditory cortex, the hearing part of the brain.” —Jad Abumrad [09:59]
    • “A part of the brain that shouldn’t have fired did fire.” —Charles Fernyhough [10:02]

• Discussion of Infant Synesthesia

  • Jad and Charles speculate on whether all senses are initially blurred together (a “big synesthetic knot”):
    • “So that when he hears my voice, maybe he sees flashes of color, or maybe when he looks at the wall, he hears tones, or maybe when light comes in through the window, he tastes it like salt or something.” —Jad Abumrad [10:36]

5. The Philosophical Problem: Can We Know Another’s Experience?

• Limits to Knowing Consciousness
  • Charles points out the philosophical limits to knowing anyone’s consciousness:
    • “Actually, I can’t know that anybody is conscious.” —Charles Fernyhough [11:08]
    • “I can’t know that you’re conscious.” —Charles Fernyhough [11:10]
    • “You could be a really smart zombie. You could be a robot. ... It may be that I’m the only person in the universe who is conscious.” —Charles Fernyhough [11:14-11:26]

6. Sticky Fixation: The ‘Gaze’ as a Brain Glitch

• Why Babies Stare So Much

  • Jad asks about his son’s recent staring. Charles explains “sticky fixation,” which is the result of a developmental transition in the visual system from subcortical to cortical control.

    • “As the handover happens... there’s a kind of struggle for power ... So the baby temporarily loses control of where he or she is looking because of this struggle for power.” —Charles Fernyhough [12:17]
    • The result: “It’s as if the baby can’t take its eyes off you.” [12:44]

  • Memorable Exchange:

    • Jad: “You’re telling me this is a brain glitch.” [12:52]
    • Charles: “It’s quite a well documented phenomenon. And it’s bad news for the parents who think that their babies are gazing at them adoringly because actually, they just kind of...They don’t know where to look.” [12:54]

7. Why This Matters: The Leap of Faith

• Projecting Meaning is Undeniably Human
  • Despite the biological explanation, Jad notes that it’s important for parents to project meaning onto a baby’s gaze; this is part of teaching social feedback loops crucial for development.
    • “You have to project. You have to make that leap of faith. ... Because eventually, that will teach this little dude how the world works, that humans operate on relationships which are these feedback loops...” —Jad Abumrad [13:09]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

| Timestamp | Quote | Speaker | |---|---|---| | [04:40] | “What is this little creature experiencing? ...What does the world look like to a tiny baby? What does it smell like? What does it sound like?” | Jad Abumrad | | [07:03] | “Imagine being in a Greek village in the summer at noon ... everything is white ... you suddenly take off those sunglasses ... It’s that bright.” | Charles Fernyhough | | [07:49] | “The echoes are actually there, but our brains filter them out. ... A newborn baby's hearing, we guess ... is in a very echoey way.” | Charles Fernyhough | | [09:59] | “Sometimes when they showed them, say, a cross, the vision part would be silent, but they’d see a spark in the auditory cortex, the hearing part of the brain.” | Jad Abumrad | | [11:10] | “I can’t know that you’re conscious.” | Charles Fernyhough | | [12:44] | “It’s as if the baby can’t take its eyes off you.” | Charles Fernyhough | | [13:09] | “You have to project. You have to make that leap of faith. ...Because eventually, that will teach this little dude how the world works...” | Jad Abumrad |

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 04:30 – Jad introduces the central question and his newborn son Emil.
• 05:54 – Introduction of Charles Fernyhough and his background.
• 06:32 – Discussion of babies' visual perception and eye lens clarity.
• 07:49 – Auditory perception and echo phenomenon in infants.
• 08:36 – Brain cross-wiring, EEG study description.
• 10:36 – Synesthetic speculation: could babies’ senses be blended?
• 11:08 – The philosophical limits of knowing consciousness.
• 11:56 – “Sticky fixation” and the neuroscience behind the newborn gaze.
• 13:09 – Social projections, parental leaps of faith, and the importance of feedback loops.

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Episode Tone & Final Thoughts

The episode is inquisitive, personal, and gently irreverent—balancing awe at the mystery of newborn minds with humor, philosophical humility, and warmth. Listeners are left with a mix of wonder and skepticism about both the scientific and philosophical unknowns of infant experience.

“You have to make that leap of faith.” —Jad Abumrad [13:09]

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Further Reading:
Charles Fernyhough’s book: A Thousand Days of Wonder: A Scientist's Chronicle of His Daughter's Developing Mind

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Transcript

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[Jad Abumrad]

Wait, you're listening? Okay.

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[Charles Fernyhough]

All right.

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Okay.

[Charles Fernyhough]

All right.

[Jad Abumrad]

You're listening to Radiolab Radio Lab shorts.

[Tonya Mosley]

From WNYC.

[Jad Abumrad]

And npr. All right, so for this podcast, I want to talk about my kid. His name is Emil. This is him right here. And by the way, I do plan to make this interesting to people who don't have kids, because I was just one of those people two months ago. So bear with me. But okay, Emil, he's two months old, he's still in the munchkin phase, and he's just starting to tune in the world. So there are these moments, like yesterday, for example, where he gets real quiet and he just stares at me. It's kind of amazing, but it also kind of presents an interesting question which I want to explore right here. In fact, you can't avoid it. You're just staring at this thing and you're like, what is this little creature experiencing? Like here is a little human being that is brand new in the world. What does the world look like to a tiny baby? What does it smell like? What does it sound like? And I happen to find somebody who could Help me at least begin to answer these questions. Hello?

[Charles Fernyhough]

Hi, Jad.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hi. Is this Charles?

[Charles Fernyhough]

Yes, that's right.

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[Charles Fernyhough]

Good to talk to you, Charles.

[Jad Abumrad]

Before we get started, can I just have you introduce yourself so I can get your name right?

[Charles Fernyhough]

Okay. Hi, my name's Charles Fernyhough. I'm a writer and developmental psychologist from Durham University.

[Jad Abumrad]

Back when Charles had his first child, Athena, he decided to tackle that question.

[Charles Fernyhough]

What is it like? What's going on for this little person as a dad, you know, as an awestruck new dad, but also as a scientist. So he wrote a book called A Thousand Days of a Scientist's Chronicle of His Daughter's Developing Mind.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's an amazing book where he basically goes through what we do and don't know about what's happening in the minds of little babies when they're brand new. So I put the scenario to him. Ok, Emil's brand new. When I'm sitting there holding him and we're staring at each other, what exactly is he seeing?

[Charles Fernyhough]

One difference that does relate to their visual system is that the lens of their eye is absolutely crystal clear. Whereas your lens, my lens, because they're of a certain age, they've become slightly yellowed. So they filter out some of the blue frequencies of the light that we see.

[Jad Abumrad]

So wait, paint the picture. What would that be like for them?

[Charles Fernyhough]

I mean, this is my stab at imagining what this would be like. But if you can imagine being in a Greek village in the summer at.

[Jad Abumrad]

Noon, the sun is directly overhead and it's one of those villages where everything is white.

[Charles Fernyhough]

You know, the houses are all painted white, you're wearing sunglasses and then you suddenly take off those sung.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's that bright.

[Charles Fernyhough]

Yeah. I think light is a big. It's probably the biggest shock to newborn babies.

[Jad Abumrad]

But it's interesting to consider that that blinding haze of whiteness might actually be how the world really is. We just don't see it in any case. Then I asked him about sound. Do babies hear things differently than adults the same way they see things differently? And he said, yeah, we think so. We think they hear echoes.

[Charles Fernyhough]

The echoes are actually there, but our brains filter them out. But it takes some time for them to learn to do that. I mean, the science behind it is quite complicated. And I don't think I could explain it now, but it's to do with the relative times of arrival that the sound makes on the two ears. But the brain basically has to learn to make this adjustment. It can't do it straight away. And so A newborn baby's hearing, we guess. We don't know for sure again, because we can't know what it's like. But we guess that babies hear things in a very echoey way.

[Jad Abumrad]

But it gets even stranger. Tell me about the experiment with the babies in the brain. Cap.

[Charles Fernyhough]

Yeah. I described a study that was done with babies where they were taking EEG measurements. And these are the kind of measurements that you. You get when you put a net of 16 or so electrodes over the scalp. And these electrodes pick up the very small electrical changes that go on as your brain works. And it's a perfectly safe, harmless procedure which you can do with very young babies. Well, usually when you do these studies, you can see the way. See the way in which particular parts of the brain respond to different kinds of stimulus.

[Jad Abumrad]

In an adult brain, he says, if you show someone a picture, you will see a little bit of electricity towards the back of their brain.

[Charles Fernyhough]

If, on the other hand, you heard a sound, then the bit of your brain sort of slightly further forward from that, the auditory cortex would fire, and you wouldn't see any in the visual.

[Jad Abumrad]

Cortex because different parts of the brain have different jobs. But what happened with these babies is that things got very strange. Like, the researchers would show them a bunch of pictures, like, boop, boop, here's a circle. Boop, here's a cross. And often things would work as they were supposed to. They would see, like, a little spark in the back of the baby's brain where vision is processed. Sometimes they wouldn't. Sometimes when they showed them, say, a cross, the vision part would be silent, but they'd see a spark in the.

[Charles Fernyhough]

Auditory cortex, the hearing part of the brain.

[Jad Abumrad]

So the picture would trigger a sound in their head.

[Charles Fernyhough]

We don't know what it triggered in their head for them subjectively, but we do know that a part of the brain that shouldn't have fired did fire.

[Jad Abumrad]

They were hear what you're saying, but not quite allowing to pass through your lips as if they were hearing the picture.

[Charles Fernyhough]

But we don't know what they heard. But it's a good basis for saying that when a newborn's brain is developing, these different wirings that lead information into different parts of the brain are still taking shape.

[Jad Abumrad]

It might be, he says, that inside Emil's brain right now, at two months, all of his senses are in a big synesthetic knot. So that when he hears my voice, maybe he sees flashes of color, or maybe when he looks at the wall, he hears tones, or maybe when light comes in through the window. He tastes it like salt or something. I don't know. I mean, that's the thing.

[Charles Fernyhough]

We can't know. I mean, there is really strong philosophical grounds for being skeptical there. I mean, actually, I can't know that anybody is conscious.

[Jad Abumrad]

Wait, what does that mean?

[Charles Fernyhough]

I can't know that you're conscious.

[Jad Abumrad]

But I. But I'm talking to you.

[Charles Fernyhough]

Sure you are. But, you know, you could be a really smart zombie. You could be a robot. You know, I can't see you. You're 5,000 miles away. I mean, it may be that I'm the only person in the universe who is conscious.

[Radiolab Sponsor Announcer]

Huh.

[Charles Fernyhough]

We tend to, you know, the vast majority of us tend to say, well, he looks like me and he talks like me and he thinks like me and he perceives like me. So he's going to be like me. But it is a leap of faith.

[Jad Abumrad]

Then I told him about the stare, how, you know, just in the last little bit, Emil has started to really stare at us. And we stare back and it's. That's not a leap of faith. That's for real. And he. He told me something really depressing in.

[Charles Fernyhough]

Those first couple of months. The visual system is controlled by the subcortical regions, and they're kind of the old bits of the brain. The cortex is the relatively new, evolutionarily speaking, the relatively new part of the brain that surrounds the whole thing. And there's a switch between one kind of control system, the subcortical system and the cortical systems. But as the handover happens, and this is happening at about two months, it'd be interesting to know if he's doing this now. As the handover happens, there's a kind of struggle for power. And the subcortical regions, which were controlling vision, kind of don't immediately want to cede power to the cortical regions. So the baby temporarily loses control of where he or she is looking because of this struggle for power.

[Jad Abumrad]

Really.

[Charles Fernyhough]

The scientists call this sticky fixation. And it's where a baby will just keep staring at you. It's as if the baby can't take its eyes off you.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yes, this is what's happening now. You're telling me this is a brain glitch.

[Charles Fernyhough]

It's quite a well documented phenomenon. And it's bad news for the parents who think that their babies are gazing at them adoringly because actually, they just kind of. They don't know where to look. They can't control where they're looking. They don't know how to look away basically, ah, depressing.

[Jad Abumrad]

This might actually be one of those cases where ignorance really is blood. Because the truth is you have to project. You have to make that leap of faith. Or at least you have to believe whatever it is. You have to believe so that when he looks at you and you look back at him, you smile. Because eventually that will teach this little dude how the world works, that humans operate on relationships which are these feedback loops which, okay, at this moment in time for him, are not real. They will be soon. Radiolab is funded in part by the Sloan foundation, the National Science foundation, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Please go to our website Radiolab.org and you can check out more information there About Charles Fernyhough's book A Thousand Days of Wonder. It's a really great book.

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