In a study published in the scientific journal Nature Human Behavior, a group of scientists discovered exactly how a baby’s brain learns to process language sounds in the first hours after birth. Experts have studied which parts of the brain become active in infants when they hear sounds.
After birth, babies were exposed to different sounds for three hours. It has already been assumed that they should be able to distinguish between them. Among these sounds were vowels, and they were called both in the direct and in reverse order.
It turned out that babies could not distinguish between reversed or directly ordered vowels. At the same time, scientists were surprised that children began to distinguish them after listening to these vowels for five hours. This means that a child only needs a few hours to catch the difference between similar sounds in the first hours of life.
Experts also found that sound processing includes areas of the brain such as the upper temporal (responsible for auditory processing), frontal cortex (responsible for planning complex movements). This is especially noticeable in the left hemisphere.
Another surprising discovery was the ability of neurons (cells) in the brains of children affected by sounds to interact with each other. This was not observed in infants who were not exposed to these sounds.
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Source: Ferra
