Left or right? The answer can already be known before delivery

What will my son be like? This is the question that many parents ask themselves during pregnancy, what will characterize the next members of a household. The ultrasound help in this advance of information allowing to know some attributes of the child long before this is born, from the sex of the baby to his east will be left-handed or right-handed.

As a study of the University of Padua and the International School of Advanced Studies of Trieste has shown, during pregnancy the child gives signals on the use of the left or right hand. Some clues that can be recognized through ultrasound and thus reveal another feature of the baby before it is born.

Left or right? Preference in basic actions

How is the preference of one hand or another detected in a fetus? The answer was in the basic actions performed by the child in the womb, such as taking a finger to the mouth or feeling the uterine wall. A total of 29 pregnancies were reviewed through ultrasound in 4D during weeks 14, 18 and 22 of pregnancy in sessions that lasted about 20 minutes.

By week 18 of pregnancy, babies have already shown a hand with which they prefer to do these actions and with which to perform them more quickly. Once the pregnancy is over, the researchers They went back to review these children once they turned 9 years old. The objective was to check if at this age, in which it is clear if they are left-handed or right-handed.

At age 9, children already perform actions such as writing or eating using spoons and forks. The preference of one hand or other in these activities they put in common with which the fetuses used in the womb. The results showed that babies who showed signs of using the right or left hand in pregnancy, did the same at this age.

Given these data, the researchers indicated that this study could be the demonstration that pregnancy can be obtained information over the baby's brain. The preferred use of the right or left hand depends on the prevalence of one hemisphere over the other. If these data can be obtained in the womb, the presence of disorders such as the autism spectrum could also be known in advance.

Other information in ultrasound: laterality

As already said, the ultrasound It is a tool with which parents can know information about their children before they are born. One of the most effective pregnancy control systems that has the following utilities:

- Parents can see if the child's development is correct and the heart beats as it should at different times of pregnancy.

- Creation of a link between the parents and the child, to be able to be seen before it grows. Affect that is greater in the case of the 4D because they allow to identify more clearly the face of the baby.

- Offers information about the baby in a non-invasive and not at all painful way in the mother.

- Allows parents to imagine what the child will be like by knowing their sex and some of their characteristics so that in this way they will not be strangers once they are born.

Damián Montero