A startling discovery by Dutch scientists as reported in BioEdge:
Dutch scientists have discovered that 30-week foetuses have memories. A study in the July/August 2009 issue of the journal Child Development conducted by researchers at Maastricht University Medical Centre and the University Medical Centre St. Radboud will provide more ammunition for anti-abortion activists.The scientists studied about 100 healthy pregnant Dutch women and their fetuses. After receiving a number of stimuli, the fetus no longer responds to the stimulus and the stimulus is then accepted as “safe.” In a second session, the fetus “remembers” the stimulus and the number of stimuli needed for the fetus to habituate is then much smaller.
They concluded that a 30-week foetus has a short-term memory of about 10 minutes. They also found that a a 34-week-old foetus can store information and remember it as long as four weeks later.
Interesting! Some information on "childhood amnesia" (the fact that we can't remember much of anything before 3.5 years of age) indicates these early memories don't necessarily get erased. It's the ability to retrieve them that's the problem. One theory is that language development is the key, since adult memories and their method of recalling them are thought to be language-encoded. Here's another theory: http://www.apa.org/monitor/mar06/gaba.html
Not the sort of thing I expect the Dutch to be researching or publicizing.