Jan. 26, 2008 -- Music appreciation begins in the womb, suggests new research that found newborns can feel the beat, even in their sleep.
The findings indicate beat perception, and possibly other aspects of music appreciation, are innate, which in turn may mean musicality could carry some evolutionary advantage for all humans.
"Our results suggest that beat detection does not require voluntary attention," said lead author Istvan Winkler.
"We did not test infants when they were awake," added Winkler, a researcher at the Institute for Psychology at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. "This is because newborns are usually restless when they are awake, often hungry and crying."
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Winkler and his team presented 14 healthy newborn infants, between 37 and 40 weeks old, with an R&B-style music snippet composed of snare, bass and hi-hat. Every so often they would break the rhythm by removing a downbeat. The infants were outfitted with non-invasive scalp electrodes that measured their brain activity while the music played.
According to a paper published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers found that omitting the downbeat elicited brain activity in the newborns associated with a violation of sensory expectations. Instead of hearing something like, "boom chicka boom chicka boom..." the infants heard something akin to, "boom chicka boom chicka chicka...," which the auditory and frontal cortex parts of their brains registered.
The study was duplicated with 14 adults, producing comparable results.
Co-author Henkjan Honing, a University of Amsterdam music cognition specialist, told Discovery News that it's possible "newborns might be able to fully perceive meter."
"Meter is a music theoretical term for at least two levels of beat -- think of a march (double meter) or a waltz (triple meter)," he explained.
Winkler added that meter may therefore come naturally to humans from day one, showing babies "are ready to 'understand' the world in a much more complex way than previously thought."
The scientists now believe that the ability to perceive music develops in the womb along with the brain. They don't think it is just related to awareness of the mother's heartbeat.
"Consider, if beat induction could be explained by sensing the heartbeat of the mother, why did not music develop in all animals?" Winkler asked.
Winkler pointed out that prior studies have shown that music "presented repeatedly during the last month of pregnancy is 'recognized' by the brain of the infant after birth as well as that neonates are sensitive to the voice of their own mother compared to the voice of other females, so there is real learning in the womb."
Yet another study, led by Stephen Malloch of the University of Western Sydney, discovered that babies who received "music therapy," consisting of a therapist gently singing to them, were less irritable and cried less than infants who received no such therapy.
The positive effect of musical therapy for newborn infants may even provide health benefits.
"It's likely the babies who received music therapy used up less energy when compared with the babies who did not receive the therapy," Malloch said. "If a baby is less irritable and cries less, this has implications for...healing and weight gain, two significant facts which contribute to the length of a hospital stay."
Related Links:
BBC: Babies Can Learn in the Womb
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