The brain of fetuses between 28 and 32 weeks of gestation is now ready to establish the neural functions responsible for deciphering human speech, says a study published today in the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The authors, a team of researchers from several French institutions, led by Fabrice Wallois of the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSER), point out thatat birth children are already able to distinguish some syllables and recognize human language, as echoed by the SINC agency. However, it is not yet clear how those immature neural circuits process language.
The researchers conducted an experiment using optical scanning technology with 12 fetuses between 28 and 32 weeks’ gestation, the earliest age of cortical response to external stimuli, while they were asleep. The aim was to examine whether the preterm brain can perceive linguistic and non-linguistic differences in syllables. In this way they found a series of similarities between the linguistic processing of preterm babies and adults, includingneurological responses in syllable changes such as ‘ba’ and ‘ga’and between the female and male voice.
Furthermore, although both tests elicited responses in the right frontal region, which is the first to form in prenatal development,syllabic changes also caused a response in the left hemisphere, which suggests that certain linguistic areas of the brain show a sophisticated degree of organization in the three months before the end of gestation, the scientists note.
“The results show thatthe human brain is already organized during its development to help decipher language”, Concludes the study.
