New research suggests that exposure to language before birth influences newborn babies’ brain waves, providing evidence that language experience impacts the organization of the infant brain.
Human babies possess an extraordinary ability to pick up language during their first year of life. However, the extent to which exposure to language before birth plays a role in language acquisition has remained a mystery. A recent study published in Science Advances has shed light on this phenomenon, revealing that newborn babies’ brain waves are attuned to the language they were exposed to most frequently in the womb. This groundbreaking research provides compelling evidence that language experience already influences the functional organization of the infant brain, even before birth.
The Development of Language in Infants
During their first year, infants are considered “universal listeners” capable of learning any human language. However, as they approach their first birthday, their brains become specialized for the sounds of their native language. While this period is crucial for language development, scientists have long speculated whether prenatal exposure to language shapes auditory and speech perception in infants.
Between five and seven months of gestation, a fetus begins to hear sounds from outside the womb. Shortly after birth, infants demonstrate a preference for their mother’s voice and native language. Moreover, newborns can recognize rhythms and melodies heard in utero, indicating that prenatal exposure to music may contribute to the development of musical abilities. Yet, it has remained unclear whether the same holds true for language.
Research Findings: Brain Waves and Language Exposure
Benedetta Mariani, a Ph.D. student at the Padova Neuroscience Center at the University of Padova, and her colleagues conducted a study to investigate the relationship between language exposure in utero and newborn brain waves. The researchers recruited 33 expectant mothers who were native French speakers from the maternity ward of Robert Debré Hospital in Paris. They used encephalography (EEG) to monitor the brain waves of the newborn babies between one and five days after birth.
EEG is a technique that measures neural oscillations or brain waves, which play a role in understanding speech and language in adults. The researchers aimed to determine whether the same brain architecture present in adults, with extensive language experience, was already present to some degree in the newborn brain. They also wanted to establish whether the rhythms produced by the newborns’ brains could align with the rhythms of the language they heard most frequently in the womb.
During the study, the babies were asleep, and the researchers played different language versions of the fairytale “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” (French, Spanish, and English) in various orders. They recorded the babies’ brain waves during three minutes of silence before and after each language session. The babies wore caps with electrodes placed over brain regions associated with auditory and speech perception in infants.
The researchers analyzed the electrophysiological activity measured by the electrodes as frequency signals. This analysis helped them determine whether hearing the different languages activated brain waves associated with processing various elements of speech, such as syllables (theta oscillations) or distinct sound units known as phonemes (gamma oscillations).
The study’s findings revealed that newborn babies who had recently been exposed to their mother’s native language exhibited brain signals associated with long-term speech and language learning. The EEG signals showed evidence of language learning and lasting changes in brain dynamics after exposure to the language heard prenatally.
Implications and Future Research
The study’s lead author, Benedetta Mariani, emphasized that prenatal language experience supports language development but does not solely determine developmental outcomes. While babies who miss out on this prenatal “language priming” may not suffer developmental consequences, the research highlights the importance of prenatal and postnatal experiences in shaping language and speech perception.
This study is part of a broader project led by coauthor Judit Gervain to explore how language and speech perception develop both prenatally and in the crucial first years of life. The researchers plan to follow up with infants at different ages to investigate how these neural mechanisms support later language development. By using EEG across the lifespan, they hope to gain a deeper understanding of language development milestones, such as word learning, and how learning abilities change as babies grow.
Conclusion: Language experience in utero appears to have a significant impact on newborn babies’ brain waves, according to recent research. The study’s findings provide compelling evidence that exposure to language before birth shapes the functional organization of the infant brain. While further research is needed to fully understand the complexities of language development, this study contributes to our understanding of how prenatal and postnatal experiences influence the acquisition of language in early life.
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