London – Speaking to your baby bump can improve the child’s language skills later in life, scientists have discovered.
Research on premature infants suggests the sound of the maternal voice plays a direct role in language development.
The Harvard Medical School team think a mother’s voice may be directly linked to development of the auditory cortex – the part of the brain which processes language.
They carried out tests on 40 premature babies born between 25 and 32 weeks at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, which were divided into two groups.
One group was played three hours of recordings of their mother’s voice and heartbeat every day for a month. The second group heard only routine background hospital noise.
After 30 days, the babies’ brains were scanned.
The scientists, whose research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that the babies who had listened to their mother’s voice had a significantly larger auditory cortex.
Daily Mail