Music has a special power in the brain. It offers shared feelings and experiences across ages and cultures, and even chimpanzees have musical culture experience. Why music has such a profound effect on biology is still unknown, and enjoyment of music cannot be said to be related to survival. But given music's universal appeal and influence, scientists wondered if music could benefit brain development.


Babies born prematurely are at risk of high levels of abnormal physical development and cognitive developmental delay, especially later in life. Some experts are worried that babies who are born prematurely and spend their late brain development period in the neonatal care unit may be negatively affected by the negativities they will experience there. In particular, they wonder if hospital noise will disrupt connections between brain areas.


Some hospitals have units that are neonatal units with soothing background music, but there is no evidence that this has a major impact on brain activity. This gap in the literature prompted a group of researchers to ask whether music could provide a useful defense against some of the emotional stressors experienced by infants.


In one study, Swiss scientists measured the brain activity of babies born prematurely and normally. The scientists also divided the babies born prematurely into two groups. In the first group, eight minutes of relaxing music was played five times a week after the babies were 33 weeks old. In the other group, they were not listened to anything in particular, they were typically exposed to environmental sounds.


Brain activity was measured in all infants, normal and premature, at 40 weeks of age. Not surprisingly, it revealed that all born prematurely had weaker connectivity in many brain networks, particularly those associated with emotional processing and areas that predict early cognitive performance. However, among the premature babies, which the researchers divided into the second group, the babies who were listened to music had more nerve connections in the emotional and cognitive areas. It was observed that music stimulated brain activity parents in premature babies to resemble normal born babies.


Music not only provides the development of the hearing part of the brain, but also works the parts related to memory, attention and emotions. To take one example, the researchers played music to pregnant rats and found that the resulting offspring were better at spatial perception and recognition. And newborn babies are naturally capable of perceiving and responding to music, which supports the view that music has some universal and innate effect on our biology. There's still a lot we don't know about music: will scientists be able to detect that the fetus in the womb has a positive relationship with outdoor music? Is there a relationship between the music listened to in the last stages of pregnancy and the mental health of the baby? Does the genre of music matter? Does the mother's voice and music have the same effect?



While scientists grapple with these questions, let's focus on the magic of knowing that music has a special effect on the brain from day one. Music can even help babies who enter our noisy world a little early.