Study suggests babies are born with a sense of rhythm

By Stephen Beech

Babies are born with a sense of rhythm, suggests new research.

Tots as young as two-days-old were able to predict rhythm while listening to classical music, according to a study of their brain waves.

An international research team, led by Dr. ​​Roberta Bianco from the Italian Institute of Technology, Genoa, played J.S. Bach’s piano compositions for an audience of 49 sleeping tots to understand their musical aptitudes.

Dr. Bianco said: "It’s anticipating a beat drop, key change or chorus in a song you’ve never heard.

"Across all cultures, humans can inherently anticipate rhythm and melody.

"But are babies born with these behaviors, or are they learned?

"Research shows that by approximately 35 weeks of gestation, fetuses begin to respond to music with changes in heart rate and body movements.

"However, newborns’ ability to anticipate rhythm and melody is not fully understood."

Musical stylings used in the study, published in the journal PLOS Biology, included 10 original melodies and four shuffled songs with scrambled melodies and pitches.

While the babies listened, the researchers used electroencephalography - electrodes placed on the babies’ heads - to measure their brainwaves.

When the babies’ brain waves showed signs of surprise, it meant they expected the song to go one way, but it went another.

Dr. Bianco said: "The newborns tended to show neural signs of surprise when the rhythm unexpectedly changed.

"In other words, the miniature maestros had generated musical expectations based on rhythm.

"Previously, this result had been observed in non-human primates."

The research team found no evidence that the newborns tracked melody or were surprised by unexpected melodic changes, a skill that comes at an unknown exact point later in development.

Dr. Bianco says understanding how humans become aware of rhythm can help biologists fathom how our auditory systems develop.

She said: “Newborns come into the world already tuned in to rhythm.

"Our latest research shows that even our tiniest two-day-old listeners can anticipate rhythmic patterns, revealing that some key elements of musical perception are wired from birth.

"But there’s a twist: melodic expectations - our ability to predict the flow of a tune - don’t seem to be present yet.

"This suggests that melody isn’t innate but gradually learned through exposure."

Dr. Bianco added: "In other words, rhythm may be part of our biological toolkit, while melody is something we grow into.”

She says future studies could investigate how exposure to music during gestation affects the acquisition of rhythm and melody.