Monday, April 11, 2016

What Do Babies See

By Cameron O.


            This week I looked onto my favorite site for new medical discoveries, ScienceDaily.com, to quickly come across a video, linked here, that depicts how a Swedish company has used mathematical ways to alter photographs of parents in a way that shows what an infant’s view of them is.



            To sum up the video, the Swedish company uses a mathematical equation of how to make an image the quality that a newborn sees, they basically make it less focused and foggy. They explain this to be the way an infant views the person roughly 30 centimeters away from them. This distance was determined as the average distance mothers will cuddle or breastfeed their young newborn. The Swedish scientists also used the same formula to create an image of the same photo at distances of 60, and 120 centimeters. The image gets progressively worse as you get farther away.

            One thing intriguing to me was how even when the infants see this blurred image of their parents, they are still able to copy facial expressions almost right after birth. This makes me want to learn more about infants’ brains, eyesight, and how it changes specifically over time. This new information may be able to be used when comparing children with eyesight problems to determine how bad their symptoms may be and possibly even connect it to further studies and research.



References: "Notes From The Trenches: Diary of a Mom with a Reflux Baby." Voices from the Ville. N.p., n.d.Web. 09 Apr. 2016.

"What a Newborn Baby Sees." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, n.d. Web. 09 Apr. 2016.

Image: http://blog.kidville.com/2013/07/notes-from-the-trenches-diary-of-a-mom-with-a-reflux-baby/#.VxRJYjDhDIV

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