Measuring an infant's response to human speech

Earlier evidence has shown that infants are perceptive to human speech, indicating that newborns are more receptive to their mother's voice. Infants can also tell the difference between the voices of not only men and women, but also children and adults.

But a new collaborative study involving researchers at Birbeck College and Kings College in the UK revealed in far greater level of the response in babies' brains. Instead of just their mother's voice, infants are receptive to a range of human noises and emotions.

To find this information, researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in order to record the brain responses in sleeping babies as they were presented with emotionally neutral, positive, or negative speech from humans, as well as non-vocal environmental sounds.

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/4479/babies-are-especially-attuned-voices-emotions