Babies with the Beat

A recent study of infants reveals a sense of musical awareness in children beginning around two to three days old.  The babies' brains could recognize a downbeat in a rhythmic drum sequence and registered the equivalent of surprise whenever the downbeat was skipped. Scalp electrodes on the sleeping babies showed a brain response to a standard repetition of rock drums, and elicited a signature when the rhythm changed. This signature in adults is usually associated with the violation of a person's expectations. 

"Although the ability to sense a regular pulse in an auditory sequence has been thought of as learned sometime late in the infancy at the earliest, this is the first evidence of beat induction in newborns," says musicologist and study coauthor Henkjan Honing of the University of Amsterdam. Understanding music at such an early age may be an important key to communication and language learning. Other scientists beg to differ with this hypothesis. Many claim that, although it is important for musical ability, speech lacks a consistent pattern and is too musically irregular to be related.

The study also noted that a larger brain response was seen when there was an omission of both drums and cymbals. The sound pattern was clearly registered with the infants. Occasionally, the drums would continue while the cymbals stopped, and this also elicited a much smaller response.