What Are the Stages of Prenatal Brain Development?
During the prenatal period, human embryos go from a few cells to a fully formed baby in about 38 weeks. The human brain has its own timeline of growth during this period, and it tends to be consistent for healthy human fetuses. The major stages of prenatal brain development occur throughout the nine months of pregnancy, including the creation of the neural tube in the first month, the growth of the cerebral cortex in the second month, the development of the senses in the fourth month and the separation of the cortex into lobes in the sixth month. Scientists have been able to come up with the timeline for normal prenatal brain development thanks to several avenues of research. These include postmortem investigations on non-surviving embryos and fetuses in various fetal development stages. Doctors have also performed experiments and dissections on the fetuses of animals that have similar brain structures as humans, such as monkeys. Lastly, modern technologies such as imaging allow scient
