Blankets at birth: Transitional objects

Abstract

Birth is accompanied by a complete reset of metabolic flows in the neonate, challenging the brain to fulfill the basic needs of life through action - breathing, feeding, crying. The perinatal period is fundamentally a transitional one, such that the basic conditions for thermodynamic self-regulation are re-established ex utero. Wright and Bourke lay out the core tenants of these conditions [1]; the emergence of regularities in cortical geometry and activity that allow "crisp" states. Before this can occur - in the immediate perinatal phase - electrical recordings of neonatal cortex suggest it passes through a highly critical regime - a phase transition - with disordered statistical fingerprints. The resolution of this state is a necessary condition for the more stable metabolic conditions that support the conjectures of Wright and Bourke.