NEW MRI-based research shows that preterm infants exposed to recordings of their mother’s voice had more mature language-related brain tracts than those who did not, highlighting the nurturing power of maternal sound.
Sound Stimulation in the Neonatal Ward
Premature babies spend weeks or months hospitalised, often missing the steady rhythm of the womb and the sounds of their mother’s voice. Scientists at Stanford Medicine tested whether restoring this early exposure could boost neurological development. They recorded mothers reading aloud and played the recordings to their babies for 160 minutes each night over several weeks. By replicating prenatal speech patterns, the intervention aimed to enrich early auditory experience even when parents could not be present.
MRI Evidence of Language Network Development
Forty-six infants born eight or more weeks early were randomly assigned to either a treatment group, who heard nightly recordings of their mother’s voice, or a control group, who did not. MRI scans before hospital discharge revealed measurable structural differences: babies who listened to the recordings showed significantly greater maturation in the left arcuate fasciculus, a key white-matter pathway involved in language processing, characterised by lower mean diffusivity and higher fractional anisotropy values. The right hemisphere tracts were less affected, mirroring patterns seen in typical language lateralisation.
The findings provide the first causal evidence that simply hearing a mother’s voice can accelerate neural connectivity linked to speech during early development. Remarkably, these changes occurred after only a short intervention period, without disrupting sleep patterns or daily care routines.
Mother’s Voice and Neonatal Care
Researchers propose that incorporating mother’s voice recordings into neonatal intensive care could offer a simple, low-cost way to support brain and language development in preterm infants. Beyond providing comfort, this technique dem0onstrates how maternal speech helps shape neural architecture from the earliest stages of life.
Reference
Travis KE et al. Listening to mom in the neonatal intensive care unit: a randomized trial of increased maternal speech exposure on white matter connectivity in infants born preterm. Front Hum Neurosci. 2025;DOI:10.3389/fnhum.2025.1673471.
