Newborn babies start seeing in 3D '4 months after due date'

For the study, Ilona Kovacs and her colleagues from Budapest University of Technology and Economics in Hungary gave 15 premature and 15 full-term babies goggles that filtered out red or green light.

Representational picture

They sat the babies in a dark room and got them to stare at patterns of dots on a screen once a month for eight months, New Scientist reported.

The goggles made the dots invisible unless they were viewed in 3D.

Sensors placed on each baby's head picked up electrical signals revealing whether they could see the dots.

If they could, the sensor registered pulses of 1.875 hertz and if not there was only a background signal.

The researchers found that the babies began to see stereo images about four months after they were born, whether they were premature or full term, thereby showing that the environment not an internal clock is the likely trigger the development of this ability in the brain.u00a0