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UK Wedding News

04/11/2013

Babies Remember Music They Hear In The Womb

New research has suggested that babies who are played music while they are still in the womb, can recognise the same tune up to four months after they are born.

The study, which was carried out by researchers at the University of Helsinki and published in the journal PloS ONE, suggested that mothers-to-be who play music to their child could be boosting helping its development.

As part of the research, 12 pregnant women were given a CD by researchers and asked to play it loudly, five times a week, during the last three months of their pregnancy. They were then told to destroy the CD after giving birth to ensure any memory of the songs came from pregnancy.

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Shortly after birth, the babies were played the lullaby 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star', which had been repeated three times on the CD, and the infants' brainwaves were measured. More importantly to note, however, was that around one in eight notes of the song had been changed.

For a second group of babies – who had not been exposed to the lullaby while in the womb – also had their brain activity measured.

The research found that the brains of those who heard music before birth lit up more on hearing the lullaby - but only to the familiar notes – and the more the song had been played before birth, the greater the recognition was.

Writing in the journal PLoS ONE, the researchers explained that exposure to music in the womb may influence a critical period of brain development.

"These results show that babies are capable of learning at a very young age and that the effects of learning remain apparent in the brain for a long time," they added.

(JP/IT)

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"New research has suggested that babies who are played music while they are still in the womb, can recognise the same tune up to four months after they are born."