NEUROPHYSIOLOGICAL RESOURCES OF PRENATAL CHILDHOOD

Abstract

The article presents numerous evidence of the mental and physical reactions of a prenatal child to external influences, collected by science over the past decades. The data of Russian and foreign researchers convincingly demonstrate the presence in a prenatal child of a whole range of mental and physiological reactions and processes, such as movements, emotions, memory, biorhythms of vital activity, reactions to musical influences and much more. Arguments are given in favor of the fact that the laying of morphofunctional structures in prenatal ontogenesis is not only a preadaptation to postnatal life, but also a full-fledged adaptation to the specific conditions of the maternal organism and sensory stimuli of the external environment, including with the manifestation of mental reactions. The results of scientific research give grounds to assert that the preventive reserves of the prenatal period are quite large, including because the most intense changes in the nervous system occur in the intrauterine, intranatal and early postnatal periods of neuro-ontogenesis. All this indicates, as some modern authors believe, that an anticipatory reflection of reality is programmed in the fetal brain, which allows us to talk about the existence of mental processes before birth. In general, the identified reactions, according to the author, give reason to consider the prenatal period as the first period of the child’s mental development. This, in turn, allows to call the prenatal period of ontogenesis the period of prenatal childhood, with the resulting legal consequences for the protection of the rights of the prenatal child, as well as the need to develop psychological and pedagogical programs to support its development.