Babies' Brains Can Follow a Beat From Birth, New Studies Reveal

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Babies' Brains Can Follow a Beat From Birth, New Studies Reveal

For over a century, the prevailing psychological understanding of infancy, famously described by William James as a “blooming, buzzing confusion,” suggested a world of undifferentiated sensory input for newborns. However, recent scientific endeavors are dismantling this notion, presenting evidence that infants are born equipped with a remarkably sophisticated neurological apparatus. New research indicates that babies can not only organize the visual world into distinct categories but also discern the underlying beat in music, capabilities that emerge surprisingly early in development.

The first of two pivotal studies, published recently in Nature Neuroscience, focused on the visual processing capabilities of infants. Neuroscientists achieved a rare feat: conducting functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans on over 100 awake two-month-old infants. The objective was to observe how their brains categorize visual objects. The fMRI technique demands near-absolute stillness, making the scanning of infants an exceptionally challenging undertaking. As the infants lay within the scanner, researchers presented them with a rapid succession of images depicting animals, food, household items, and other familiar objects. Cliona O’Doherty, a developmental neuroscientist at Stanford University who led the work at Trinity College Dublin, likened the experience for the infants to viewing "an IMAX for babies."

The technical hurdles of fMRI are significant even for adults who can follow instructions to remain still. "MRI is difficult even under ‘ideal’ circumstances when research participants can follow instructions to hold still," commented Scott Johnson, a developmental psychologist at UCLA, who was not involved in the study. "Babies can’t take instruction, so these researchers must have the patience of saints." Despite these challenges, the imaging data yielded remarkable insights. The scans revealed that a specific brain region, the ventral visual cortex—responsible for recognizing what we see—demonstrated response patterns similar to those observed in adults. O’Doherty and her colleagues reported in Nature Neuroscience that, in both adults and two-month-olds, the ventral visual cortex exhibits distinct activity for different categories of objects. This finding directly challenges the long-held belief that the brain gradually learns to differentiate between categories throughout development, suggesting a more innate organizational structure.

Michael Frank, a cognitive psychologist at Stanford University, also unaffiliated with the research, noted that these findings "argue against a slow, bottom-up development of visual category representations." He further highlighted that the study prompts a provocative question: Is this organizational capacity an outcome of rapid learning within the first eight weeks of life, or is it an inherent, innate feature of the infant brain?

Complementing these visual insights, a second study, published in PLOS Biology, demonstrates an even earlier cognitive feat in newborns related to auditory processing. Researchers found that less than 48 hours after birth, the brains of sleeping newborns are already capable of following and anticipating rhythmic patterns in music. In an experiment conducted in Hungary, scientists played piano pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach to nearly 50 newborns while monitoring their brain activity using electroencephalography (EEG). The research team presented both the original Bach recordings and altered versions where either the rhythm or the melody was intentionally scrambled.

Using a computational model, the researchers analyzed the neural recordings for patterns of "surprise," which would indicate that the infants had learned the musical structure and had their expectations violated. The results were striking: an altered rhythm reliably elicited a neural surprise response, whereas a scrambled melody went largely unnoticed by the infants' brains. In essence, newborn brains can keep a beat, but they cannot yet follow a tune. This asymmetry in processing makes intuitive sense, according to Roberta Bianco, a neuroscientist at the University of Pisa, who led the study while at the Italian Institute of Technology in Rome. "In the womb, the rhythmic features are already very predominant in the listening environment of the baby," she explained. "You have the [heartbeat] of the mom, the walking of the mom, and rhythmic information of any sort passes through." Conversely, the amniotic fluid tends to muffle specific pitches, meaning fetuses receive less exposure to melodic patterns during gestation, potentially explaining the brain's stronger predisposition to process rhythm.

However, experts urge caution in interpreting these findings too broadly. Erin Hannon, a psychologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who was not involved in the study, emphasized that "the ability to neurally track periodicities in music does not necessarily equate to rich musical beat or meter perception." She pointed out that "many studies suggest it takes children a long time to get good at dancing or moving in time with music, or to correctly match a drum or metronome to music." This suggests that while the basic neural machinery for rhythm detection is present at birth, the development of more complex musical cognition is a protracted process.

While both studies utilized advanced brain imaging techniques to focus on neural activity, the direct implications for observable early cognition or behavior remain an area for further investigation. The field of newborn neuroscience is still in its nascent stages, promising a wealth of future discoveries that will undoubtedly deepen our understanding of the earliest foundations of human intelligence and perception.

Ekhbary News Agency