It’s fascinating how babies seem to have a natural sensitivity to music from a very early age! Studies have shown that newborns are able to discern basic musical rhythms, even before they fully develop language. This ability suggests that musical appreciation may be innate in humans. Music appears to play an important role in cognitive and emotional development from the earliest stages of life.

Music and babies

The relationship between music and babies is truly interesting! Music can play many roles in child development, from calming and entertaining babies to stimulating cognitive, emotional and social development. Here are some aspects of this relationship:

1. **Calm and Comfort:** Many parents find that music has the power to calm and soothe their babies, helping them fall asleep or relax.

2. **Sensory Stimulation:** Babies are naturally drawn to sensory stimulation, and music offers a wide range of sounds, rhythms, and melodies that can captivate their attention and stimulate their senses.

3. **Auditory development:** Exposing babies to music early on can help develop their auditory perception, allowing them to distinguish different sounds and musical patterns.

4. **Social Interaction:** Singing to your baby, dancing with your baby, or playing musical instruments together not only strengthens the bond between parent and child, but also helps babies understand nonverbal communication and social cues.

5. **Emotional expression:** Music has the power to convey emotions, and babies can learn to recognize and respond to different emotional states through music, contributing to the development of their emotional intelligence.

6. **Cognitive stimulation:** Studies show that exposure to music can have positive effects on babies' cognitive development, including improvements in memory, attention, and auditory processing skills.

For these reasons, many parents incorporate music into their daily baby care routine, whether through lullabies, soft ambient music or interactive musical games.

Data review

This study really reveals interesting insights into rhythm perception across species, including humans and monkeys. The finding that newborns have an innate ability to perceive musical beats, corroborated by alternative methods and also by the absence of this ability in monkeys, suggests a gradual evolution of this ability over time.

The sensitivity to isochrony in monkeys, that is, the ability to recognize the regularity of rhythms, indicates that basic elements of rhythmic perception are present in other species, but the ability to discern and process more complex musical beats appears to be a distinctive characteristic of humans.

This research not only expands our understanding of the biological underpinnings of musicality, but also highlights how music may have played an important role in human evolution, possibly conferring adaptive advantages to our species. This ability to perceive and interact with rhythmic elements may have influenced the development of language, communication and social cohesion in human societies throughout history.