Mbriotech - News

Researchers find prenatal music exposure may affect the developing brain

2019-10-02T17:30:00-04:00

While many believe that babies are born as “blank slates,” they may actually enter the world with more memory than we think.

Research has found that fetal auditory learning becomes possible soon after the onset of hearing, by around 27 weeks. Looking to understand whether babies remember sounds heard in the womb, a group of researchers from Finland conducted a study looking at the effect of pregnancy music on brain activity.

They asked a group of mothers to play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” during their last trimester. They also studied a control group of mothers who did not play their babies the music. The researchers checked in on the babies in both groups after birth, and at four months, to test their learning. They played the babies the same melody, but with a few notes changed, and recorded their brain response.

The researchers found that the babies of the mothers who had played the music during pregnancy had stronger brain responses to the original tune than the others. The team also found that the babies of the mothers who played the song more often had even more intense brain responses.  
“Our results show that prenatal exposure to music can have long-term effects on the developing brain and enhance neural responsiveness to the sounds used in the prenatal training,” says Eino Partanen, research team leader. “Since the prenatal auditory environment modulates the neural responsiveness of fetuses, it seems plausible that the adverse prenatal sound environment may also have long-lasting detrimental effects.” So while babies may pick up on more pleasant sounds like their mother’s voice or music, they may also be affected by noisy home and work environments.

As the study stated: “…additional fetal exposure to structured sound environments might be beneficial for supporting the auditory processing of, for example, infants at risk for dyslexia in whom basic auditory processing was shown to be impaired.”

In conclusion, the research shows that the external prenatal sound environment may affect babies in the womb: they can retain memories of prenatal music long after birth. Parents should also ensure that sources of loud, prolonged noise are avoided, during as well as after pregnancy.

mbrio makes sharing music with your baby easy, comfortable and safe. For more information, click here

Swiss researchers find music enhances brain development of premature babies

2019-09-23T17:30:00-04:00

Nearly 1% of children are born “very prematurely”—before the 32nd week of pregnancy. Though today’s modern medicine gives them a good chance for survival, these babies are still at high risk of developing neuropsychological disorders including learning difficulties and attentional or emotional disorders.

“At birth, these babies’ brains are still immature. Brain development must, therefore, continue in the intensive care unit in an incubator under very different conditions than if they were still in their mother’s womb,” explains Petra Hüppi, professor at the University of Geneva (UNIGE) Faculty of Medicine, and Head of the University Hospitals of Geneva, Switzerland. “Brain immaturity, combined with a disturbing sensory environment, explains why neural networks do not develop normally.”

Babies in intensive care are exposed to stimuli such as alarms and doors opening and closing. Hüppi and his team of researchers wanted to see if they could enrich the environment for these babies by introducing pleasant and structuring stimuli. Knowing the hearing system is functional early on, the team decided to start with music.

A full-term baby has the chance to adjust its rhythm to that of its mother while in utero, so the researchers knew it was important that the musical stimuli be related to the baby’s condition. “We wanted to structure the day with pleasant stimuli at appropriate times: a music to accompany their awakening, a music to accompany their falling asleep, and a music to interact during the awakening phases,” says Lara Lordier, PhD in neurosciences and researcher at the HUG and UNIGE.

The team enlisted the help of composer Andreas Vollenweider who played a variety of instruments for the babies. The instrument that the babies reacted the most to was the Indian snake charmers’ flute (the punji).

“Very agitated children calmed down almost instantly, their attention was drawn to the music!” says Lordier.

So far, medical imaging reveals that premature infants who have listened to this music are developing much more similar to that of full-term infants.

Babies can begin to hear sounds outside of the womb by 20 to 24 weeks. mbrio earbud adapters are a safe, comfortable way to share music with your baby in the womb. Enjoy nurturing your little one with mbrio today!

Can you influence your children’s tastes in music during pregnancy?

2019-09-23T17:30:00-04:00

Remember what it was like to be in your mother’s womb…of course not! But you may have subconsciously picked up on stimuli from the outside world before you even entered it.

Researchers from the University of Leicester in England have found that babies can remember things from the womb much longer than initially thought. While previous studies have shown that babies a few days old are still familiar with pre-birth experiences, psychologist Alexandra Lamont found that year-old babies still recognized musical pieces played before birth.

During the study, mothers were asked to listen to a song of their choice for half an hour every day during the last three months of their pregnancy. Some choose reggae, some pop and other songs they thought would do their child good. Then after birth, the mothers didn’t listen to the song again.

A year later, Lamont played 30 seconds of the mother’s song for each baby, as well as other pieces of various styles. If babies continued to pay attention to the speakers, she took it as a sign of preference and recognition. While all the babes seemed to like fast-paced, exciting music, they also showed a preference for their mother’s song, no matter what the style.

But Lamont doesn’t think mothers can necessarily change their children’s overall musical tastes by playing them certain songs during pregnancy (can’t promise they’ll be listening to classical music as teenagers). However, she was surprised to find that the babies could discriminate and remember individual songs even after a year. Their preference for their mother’s song also shows that music can strengthen the bond of a baby and mother.