Cerebellum: The area in charge of motor control.This is where the cerebral cortex and its various lobes (including the frontal and temporal lobes) reside. Cerebrum: The biggest part of the brain, and it's responsible for thinking, remembering and feeling.There are five different regions of the brain that develop, each responsible for different functions: In fact, the cerebral cortex - which is responsible for voluntary actions, thinking and feeling - only starts to work around the end of pregnancy, with simple electrical activity detectable in regions associated with senses (like touch) and motor skills in premature babies. That said, the brainstem, which controls vital functions like heart rate and breathing, isn’t mostly complete until the end of the second trimester, and the cerebral cortex doesn’t take up its duties until the third trimester. Your baby’s brain continues to develop in the coming weeks, endowing him with a remarkable range of involuntary movements like stretching, yawning and sucking by the end of the first trimester and more coordinated movements in the second trimester. By week 8, electrical activity begins in the brain - allowing your baby to coordinate his first (spontaneous) movements that doctors can even see on an ultrasound! The first synapses in baby’s spinal cord form during week 7 of pregnancy. Also at about week 5 of pregnancy, the neural plate folds onto itself to form the neural tube, which closes by about week 6 of pregnancy to eventually become the brain and spinal cord.īy about week 10, the brain is a small, smooth structure that looks a whole lot more like the brain you’re used to (minus the folds that make up the various brain regions, which develop later in pregnancy).

Brain development icon