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The rhythm and melody of the speech heard by the fetus in the womb tunes the brain to recognize and learn more easily their native tongue, according to a study led by the University of Padova and published in Science Advances1. The researchers measured neural activity in newborns using electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate how their remarkable ability to quickly acquire language emerges.
Scientists have debated for a long time whether the human brain is equipped with an innate learning mechanism specific for language, or whether infants learn so quickly solely through exposure to speech. Our brain certainly evolved the innate ability to recognize regular patterns in information received through the senses. In addition, researchers recently showed that that fetuses already have a functional auditory system between the 24th and 28th week of pregnancy.
Since the mother’s body filters out high frequencies of the speech signal perceived in the womb, fetuses cannot hear individual sounds or words, only speech melody and rhythm.
“The hypothesis behind our research is that exposure to the mother tongue’s melody and rhythm before birth modulates the brain’s oscillatory patterns and prepares fetuses to learn the language heard in the womb efficiently, once they are born,” says Judit Gervain, professor of developmental psychology at the University of Padova and senior author of the study.
The researchers selected a group of newborns between 1 and 5 days old with French native speaking mothers, and recorded their neural activity while they were listening to three different languages: French, Spanish and English. The study measured non only their responses to the three languages, but also whether brain activity continued after language stimulation. The results showed that French, unlike the two unfamiliar languages Spanish and English, evoked a longer and more complex reaction even after stimulation stopped, showing an ongoing learning process. “The effect was very specific: the reaction to French was significantly different from the reaction to English, but also to Spanish, although this latter has a similar prosody to French,” says Gervain.
Now the research team is expanding the study, analysing the neural activity of preterm infants, who had less time in the womb to hear the mother’s voice, as well as infants who are hearing impaired.
