ABSTRACT
Newborns look at the faces that peer into the cradle, already recognise the smell of their mother, can distinguish her voice, and react to being touched and to the presence of those around them. The baby’s sensory receptors and paths of conductivity are formed very early on and then the various systems—smell, taste, hearing, and sight—come into being. The newborn baby is looked upon by scientists as some kind of high-performance computer, capable of making infinite numbers of connections and links. Proprioception is possible from the moment of birth, and gives babies the means to recognise their environment before the maturation of central or peripheral receptors. The moodiness of these newborn babies is never moodiness in the sense that adults understand it. For the time being, the only thing that counted was sensory stimulation of premature babies, as if they were beyond language.
