Talking to unborn babies while they are still in the womb may improve their language skills later in life, scientist have discovered.
The sound of a mother’s voice is one of the first sensory experiences a tiny baby has as they develop in the womb.
Scientists have long known that a foetus can feel the thump of a mother’s heartbeat and hear her words, but until now they have been unaware of the role this has in a child’s development.
New research on premature infants suggests that the sound of the maternal voice plays a direct role in their hearing and language development.
Babies played recordings of their mother's voice while they were in the womb were born with larger brains. They had a more developed auditory cortex - the brain's language-processing centre
The study, led by researchers at Harvard Medical School, may help explain previous evidence that babies are able to recognise certain elements of language from the moment of their birth.
The team, whose research was published n the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, think that a mother’s voice may be directly linked to development of the auditory cortex - the part of the brain which processes language.
Study leader Dr Amir Lahav and colleagues at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston carried out tests on babies born extremely prematurely.
The 40 infants, born between 25 and 32 weeks into the pregnancy, were divided into two groups.
One group was played three hours of audio recordings of their mother’s voice and heartbeat every day for a month - at which time they would still have been in the womb during a normal birth.
The infants in the second group only heard routine background hospital noise.
After 30 days, the brain of each baby was scanned using ultrasounds.
The scientists found that those infants who had listened to their mother’s voice had a significantly larger auditory cortex.
Dr Lahav and his team wrote: ‘We demonstrate that the auditory cortex is more adaptive to womb-like maternal sounds than to environmental noise.
'Results are supported by the biological fact that maternal sounds would otherwise be present in utero [the womb] had the baby not been born prematurely.
‘We theorise that exposure maternal sounds may provide newborns with the auditory fitness necessary to shape the brain for hearing and language development.’
Some experts already recommend that mothers speak or sing to their unborn babies.
Exposure to a mother's voice while in the womb shapes the brain for hearing and language development - improving their language skills later in life, experts said
Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust in London launched ‘womb song’ workshops four years ago, in which mothers-to-be were encouraged to sing during pregnancy.
But the new research may also be used as a tool to help premature infants develop, especially when they are kept on intensive care wards in the first weeks of their lives.
The authors wrote: ‘The use of recorded maternal sounds in the first month of life may be especially helpful in the population of newborns whose exposure to live maternal stimulation is often limited because of infrequent parental visits.’
But they said much more research is needed before the recorded sounds can be recommended as a clinical tool, and added: ‘Clearly, pre-term newborns have more working against them than can be fully compensated for by added exposure to maternal sounds.
‘However, the present study begins to show the effect that maternal sounds could have on very early brain development.’
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2965496/Talking-baby-bump-really-DOES-improve-child-s-language-skills-later-life-Babies-serenaded-womb-born-larger-brains.html#ixzz3Sg7YX1ud
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