Even before birth, babies may be already beginning to process language the way adults do. A new study published yesterday (February 25) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that brains are able to distinguish between basic sounds as early as 29 weeks into development.
Because it is extremely difficult to study fetuses inside their mothers, researchers observed babies who had been born 2 to 3 months early to get at the neural development that normally occurs in utero. They used a non-invasive brain imaging technique called functional near-infrared spectroscopy to monitor the infants’ responses to sounds while sleeping.
By watching the babies’ brain activity, the researchers found that they could distinguish between male and female voices and between the syllables “ba” ...
