A pediatric neurologist: The newborn brain is not a completely blank slate
Fetuses learn to recognize foreign languages while still in the womb
Study.. Fetuses learn to recognize foreign languages while still in the womb
Can infants recognize foreign languages they heard while still in the womb, and distinguish them from their mother tongue or languages they have never heard before? A research team in Montreal, Canada, has found that newborns who listened to stories in foreign languages while still fetuses respond to those languages in the same way they do to their own mother tongue.
This study, published in the scientific journal Nature Communication, which specializes in communication and language skills, is the first of its kind to use brain imaging techniques to scientifically prove a hypothesis that has long been questioned by neuropsychologists and neuroscientists.
Previous studies have shown that fetuses and newborns can recognize familiar sounds and even prefer listening to their mother tongue immediately after birth. However, these results were based on behavioral observations, such as a baby's gesture or changes in heart rate, without conclusive evidence from measuring brain changes while the infant listens to the mother tongue.
In statements to the Scientific American website, which specializes in scientific research, Anna Gallagher, a neurologist at the University of Montreal and lead author of the study, said, "We cannot say that infants learn language before birth, but we can say that newborns feel familiar with the language or languages they heard while still in the fetus. Exposure to these languages while in the womb helps form communication networks in the brain that influence their response to language after birth."
Approximately 60 pregnant women in the 35th week of pregnancy participated in the experiment. Thirty-nine of them were exposed to audio recordings of stories in French, their mother tongue, for 10 minutes, followed by recordings of the same stories in German and Hebrew for 10 minutes.
This process was repeated daily throughout the pregnancy. Researcher Adrien Renier, a clinical neuropsychologist at the University of Montreal, explained that the choice of German and Hebrew stems from the significant differences between them and French in terms of phonetics and pronunciation characteristics.
The remaining 21 pregnant women participating in the experiment were not exposed to any special external influences, and thus their fetuses were exposed to their native French language under normal daily living conditions.
During the first ten hours to three days after birth, the research team used functional infrared spectroscopy to monitor the response of the newborns' brains to German, Hebrew, and French. This technique measures changes in blood oxygen saturation levels in the brain during various cognitive functions.
The researchers found increased activity in the left temporal lobe, the brain's language processing center, in all newborns participating in the experiment when they heard phrases in French. However, when the newborns were exposed to German and Hebrew, the same brain activity occurred only in those who had heard the same languages while still in their mothers' wombs.
As for the control group, who had not heard these languages before while still fetuses, they showed no brain activity in the language-processing areas when listening to German and Hebrew.
Researcher Ana Carolina Quan, a pediatric neurologist and member of the Brazilian Academy of Neurology, believes this study supports the idea that newborn brains are not completely "blank slates." Rather, the environment in which the fetus lives in the womb shapes some of its mental functions even before birth.
Researchers have not determined the length of exposure to a foreign language that is sufficient for the fetus to become familiar with it and recognize it later. Some previous studies on the effects of the auditory environment on fetal development have suggested that this period may be hours, while other research has revealed that short periods of no more than 15 minutes may be sufficient to produce the same effect as learning foreign languages.
Researcher Quan added, "This study does not recommend that pregnant women expose their fetuses to foreign languages to make them more intelligent or multilingual later in life." She explained that studying the impact of fetal exposure to foreign languages on language development later in life is important for understanding language problems and disorders in children, which affect between 5 and 10 percent of children in the United States alone. She added, "This research provides further scientific evidence that language development begins early, before birth, which may help detect and treat language delays in children."
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