Newborn's brain activity signals the origin of word memories.

ABSTRACT: Recent research has shown that specific areas of the human brain are activated by speech from the time of birth. However, it is currently unknown whether newborns' brains also encode and remember the sounds of words when processing speech. The present study investigates the type of information that newborns retain when they hear words and the brain structures that support word-sound recognition. Forty-four healthy newborns were tested with the functional near-infrared spectroscopy method to establish their ability to memorize the sound of a word and distinguish it from a phonetically similar one, 2 min after encoding. Right frontal regions--comparable to those activated in adults during retrieval of verbal material--showed a characteristic neural signature of recognition when newborns list

SUBMITTER: Benavides-Varela S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3497807 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature