Kolb – noise and brain development

One of the things that excites me is the whole idea of preconception experiences having an effect on grandkids, for example. One such series of studies we’re engaged in now is in the effects of noise. Now let’s imagine that you’re a pregnant woman and you’re exposed to traffic noise. That’s going to be a stressor. And so, we’re doing studies looking at the effects of traffic noise.

And the people I’m doing it with are Iranian, so we have noise from Tehran, traffic noise from Tehran. The animals are, pregnant animals, are exposed to this during their pregnancy and what’s the outcome of the babies. Higher levels of corticosterone for the rest of their lives, behaviours affected, changes in brain, all sorts of things are changed. The behaviour of the pregnant mom towards her pups after the noise stops is different than it would be if she had not been exposed to the noise.

And so, we’re starting to study these things. And I think the other thing in neuroscience, we’re now being able to get a handle on the molecular mechanisms. Cause it’s one thing to say oh, noise is changing the brain. Okay, the next question is then how is it doing that. Because if we know how it’s doing that, can we now step in and say we can do this to prevent it from doing that? So that’s one of the directions we’re going.