Tokyo - Babies can differentiate a language from noise at birth, suggesting either that they learn it while in the womb or humans have innate language skills, according to a research report.
The joint study by Italian, Japanese and French laboratories covered 12 Italian newborns aged two to five days and used speech samples from two Italian mothers whose infants did not participate in the experiment, according to a news media preview copy of the paper.
The study was to be published online on the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences.
The study used an optical topography device newly developed by Hitachi to detect changes in cerebral blood volume and oxygen saturation. The system uses near infra-red rays and displays blood haemoglobin levels in the brain in different colours.
When exposed to normal, forward speech, the newborns showed a significantly greater activity in the left hemisphere of their brains than in the right, according to the research. The left is known to have connections with language processing.
However, no significant differences by hemisphere were observed during the playing of tapes of backward speech or silent conditions.
The study "provides the demonstration that the newborn brain responds specifically to normal speech after only a few hours of experience with speech outside the womb," the researchers said.
The paper said the study "provides clear evidence that, at birth, the human brain is functionally organised to process speech but not matched reversed utterances."
A similar asymmetry by hemisphere is seen in adult brains, it said.
This "implies that humans are born with a brain organisation geared to detect speech signals and pay attention to utterances produced by their surroundings", it said.
The laboratories that took part in the study were the International School for Advanced Studies of Italy, the Hitachi Advanced Research Laboratory of Japan and France's National Centre for Scientific Research and School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences. - Sapa-AFP