BRAIN activity in babies listening to a drum beat suggests they are born with a keen sense of rhythm. The finding might help to spot abnormal brain development at an early age.
Babies under a year old often clap or bounce to a rhythm, but whether they are born with the ability to recognise a beat, or learn it later, was unclear. To find out, a team led by from the Institute for Psychology in Budapest, Hungary, and from the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands just two or three days old, while playing them a rock drum rhythm.
When the rhythm stopped briefly and then restarted out of sync with the original beat, the babies鈥� brains produced electrical activity known to be associated with the violation of sensory expectations (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, ). This didn鈥檛 happen after the rhythm merely missed a single beat.
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鈥淏eat perception is there right from birth,鈥� Winkler concludes. He now plans to investigate whether poor beat perception in newborns is a sign of speech and communication problems to come.