Babies Actually 'Speak' Like Adults Do

Babies Actually 'Speak' Like Adults Do: "Most new parents adopt baby talk when addressing their children, but they should know that their babies, even if they are too young to talk, understand many of the words adults say, since their brains process them in a grown-up way.

Scientists at the University of California, San Diego, used MRI and MEG technologies to show that babies barely over a year old process the words they hear with the same brain structures as adults do, and during the same amount of time too.

Also, the babies' brains are not just processing the words as if they were sounds, but are actually seizing their meaning.

MEG - an imaging process that measures tiny magnetic fields emitted by neurons in the brain, was used to establish whether babies use the same functional networks to process word meaning as adults, and MRI helped estimate the brain activity of babies aged 12 to 18 months.

In the first of the two experiments, the babies listened to a series of words and to sounds that were similar to those words but had no meaning, so that researchers could see whether they were able to make the difference between the two or not.

Then, the scientists wanted to see whether the babies were able to understand the meaning of these words, so they showed them pictures of familiar objects and played either matched or mismatched words - for example after a picture of a ball, they would play the word 'ball' or another word, like dog.

The amplitude of brain activity showed that the infants were capable of detecting the mismatch between a picture and a word - the MRI showed a brain response in the same left frontotemporal areas that process word meaning in adults.

Adults underwent the same tests to confirm the brain responses in the same brain areas."