Health Issue: The Newborn Babies Sense of direction...

Within weeks of birth, babies

develop sense of direction

Washington: Newborn rats have an innate sense of direction, a new British research has reveled. 

      The study, conducted by scientists at University College London (UCL), demonstrates that the brain's representations of the sense of place and direction appear extremely early n the animal's development - within two weeks of being born - and seemingly independently of any experience of the world.

        The directional signal, which allows the animal to know which way it is facing, is already at adult levels as soon as it can be measured in newborn rats, Sense of place is also present early, but improves with age. Representations of distance appear a few days later.

       "The question of how we acquire knowledge of the outside world and form our sense of place in it is one that has challenged both scientists and philosophers for centuries," said Francesca Cacucci, UCL Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience, one of the authors of the paper appearing in Science. The notion of a pre-wired spatial framework has been around for some time but lacked empirical support.