Could talking to a premature baby help its brain develop?

Premature babies should be played the sound of their mother's voice and heartbeat while in incubators to help aid their brain development, according to a new study.

Researchers have found that sounds similar to those experienced by an unborn baby in the womb can boost the growth of the brains of infants born prematurely.

The scientists recorded mothers of premature children as they read and sang along with sounds of their heart beats.

They then played these recordings to their babies in incubators for around three hours a day and found that this seemed to increase the growth of areas of the brain responsible for hearing.

The findings suggest that current approach to caring for premature babies could be improved by replicating the environment they would experience in the womb.

In most hospitals premature babies are put into incubators in neonatal care units as they often too frail and ill to be handled. Some hospitals also operate restricted visiting hours.

However, allowing mothers to talk to their child, or playing them recordings of her heartbeat and voice, could help their development.

Dr Amir Lahav, a pediatrician at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and a researchers at Harvard Medical School, said replicating the sounds the child might experience in the womb appears to be more beneficial than shrill noises of a hospital.

He said: 'We demonstrate that the auditory cortex is more adaptive to womb-like maternal sounds than to environmental noise.

'These results are supported by the biological fact that maternal sounds would otherwise be present in utero had the baby not been born prematurely.

'Exposure to maternal sounds may provide newborns with the auditory fitness necessary to shape the brain for hearing and language development.'

Unborn babies are thought to start to hear at around 24 weeks into gestation as neurons begin to form connections in the auditory cortex of the brain.

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