When You Talk To Your Child, His Brain Is Activated
This reaction only happens when he hears his mother’s voice, not when he hears other women’s voices, according to a new study published recently by Harvard University in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Part of our social learning, language and emotional processes is acquired by the simple fact of listening to our mother’s voice”, says the study’s lead author, Daniel Abrams, in a statement published by the university and disseminated by various media. of the world.
The conclusions reached by the study surprised the scientists, who already knew before starting the study that when a mother talks to her baby, it calms down.
However, it was not known that the mother’s voice activated so quickly and so effectively so many areas of the brain.
Abrams explains that some scientific studies have already revealed that babies prefer their mother’s voice to anyone else’s. But until now no one had explained the reasons for this phenomenon. “Nobody had stopped to observe the brain circuits that caused this”, continues the scientist.
Your child’s brain is activated with your voice
The research consisted of studying CT scans of several children while they listened to the voice of their mothers and that of a stranger.
Twenty-four children between 7 and 12 years of age who had spent their entire lives with their mothers were involved in the study.
In addition, all had an intellectual quotient (IQ) of at least 80 and none suffered from a developmental disorder or something similar, according to the text published in various media.
After completing a brief questionnaire directed at the mothers about their children’s communication skills, the mother of each child recorded three nonsense words on tape.
“Because of the children’s ages, it seemed more sensible to us to use invented words, so that they wouldn’t know them”, complete the authors.
In addition, two unknown women were asked to participate in the study, who also recorded three nonsense words. And finally, the children listened to both recordings.
The results indicated that children recognized their mother’s voice in 97% of cases, even if they only heard the mother’s voice for a second. “And the children’s brains reacted more and better to the sound of the mother than to that of the unknown woman”, the study authors explain.
Your child recognizes your voice from before birth
The findings of this study complement the findings of another group of scientists who studied, in 2014, the reaction of premature babies when they hear their mothers’ voices.
At that time, scholars proved that when a mother talks to her premature baby, it feeds better and calms down if subjected to a stressful situation.
Listening to the mother’s voice causes cortisol levels to decrease and oxytocin, the bonding hormone, to increase.
This bond of love between a child and his mother is created from the mother’s womb, where the baby is already able to hear sounds and vibrations coming from his mother. And when it’s born, this baby perfectly recognizes Mom’s voice and prefers her voice over any other in the world.
At that point, the scientists came to the conclusion that: “the mother’s voice activates the anterior prefrontal cortex and the left posterior temporal lobe more intensely than a stranger’s voice, preparing it for specific speech processing activity” .
Furthermore, Abrams explains that although it was already known that listening to the mother’s voice brought emotional well-being to the child, what they have now discovered is the biological circuit that is part of this emotional bond, whose richness brings better social and communication skills.
The results confirm that when talking to a child, many regions and systems within their brain are activated, which encourages the study of the effect of the voice of mothers of children with disabilities and autism.
“It’s intriguing to see that the echo of a mother’s voice activates so many systems in her child’s brain,” concluded the Harvard scientists, who extolled the profound power that a mother’s voice exerts over her little one.
