Is it possible that there's some kind of neural transfer from the mother's brain during pregnancy? I've been wondering if there is or if it's all genetic. Evolutionary it would be very interesting if consciousness wasn't genetic, but transferred during pregnancy.
I'd be pretty curious about the mechanism for such transfer. The umbilical cord doesn't contain nerves AFAIK (and even if it did, the whole point of placental reproduction is to isolate the embryo/fetus from the mother, so probably no nervous connection there, either), so that'd preclude a direct connection between their nervous systems. Maybe hormones or some other chemical means?
Parent organisms do influence the way their children develop, at what extent is a different question (I understand it is fractal spaghetti all the way down).
It seems planaria worms can do something like that [0].
