• Research

    • Language Influence on Fetal Brain Development

    By on December 14, 2023
    Fetal brain development
    Study: Prenatal experience with language shapes the brain

    Infants effortlessly learn language compared to adults, but we still know little about the brain’s ability to adapt to language. By analyzing neural oscillations, we found that newborns’ brain activity shows stronger long-range connections after hearing speech, especially in the language they heard before birth, suggesting the early development of language specialization in the brain.

    A group of neuroscientists from the University of Padua, Italy, collaborated with a colleague from CNRS and Université Paris Cité and uncovered evidence indicating that the language spoken by mothers during pregnancy affects the neural development of babies in the womb. The findings were published in the journal Science Advances.

    The researchers conducted experiments with newborns fitted with EEG caps to monitor their brain activity. They played recordings of a person reading different language versions of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” to 33 newborns and their French-speaking mothers. The EEG readings showed increased long-range temporal correlations in babies exposed to the French story, suggesting a unique impact of prenatal language exposure on brain development. Detrended fluctuation analysis revealed that the temporal correlations were strongest in the theta band, associated with speech perception.

    The study also found that the babies’ neural response was most pronounced when the story was read in French, indicating the role of prenatal language exposure in their brain development.

    For more information: Benedetta Mariani et al, Prenatal experience with language shapes the brain, Science Advances (2023). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adj3524

    Rachel Paul is a Senior Medical Content Specialist. She has a Masters Degree in Pharmacy from Osmania University. She always has a keen interest in medical and health sciences. She expertly communicates and crafts latest informative and engaging medical and healthcare narratives with precision and clarity. She is proficient in researching, writing, editing, and proofreading medical content and blogs.

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