Scientists from the UK and China have found that babies are able to recognize speech sounds already in the first hours after birth.. This is due to the fact that their brain initially begins to learn something new, according to Science Alert..

We often think of babies as a blank slate with little ability to learn in the first weeks of life.. But actually it is not. Even in the womb, children learn to distinguish voices and some speech sounds, and soon after birth they prefer speech sounds over non-linguistic ones..

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But exactly how a child's brain learns to process sounds remained a mystery.. In a new study, scientists observed babies in the first hours after birth. Their heads were capped with sophisticated light-emitting devices designed to measure tiny changes in oxygen levels in babies' brains.. Detectors in such a cap helped determine which areas of the baby's brain were active..

Using this procedure, children were observed during the first three hours after birth.. During this time, babies were exposed to sounds they were supposed to be able to distinguish.. These sounds included vowels, which were then played in reverse order.. The researchers note that adults could distinguish that the order of the sounds was different only 70% of the time..

In the first three hours after birth, newborns could not distinguish between the direct and reverse order of the sounds they heard.. But listening to them for five hours, babies already distinguished between direct and reverse order.. Their reaction to forward vowels became faster than to backward vowels. And after another two hours, during which they were mostly asleep, their brains responded to the forward vowels not only faster, but also stronger compared to babies who were taught a different vowel or babies who remained silent..

What’s more, scientists have noticed that brain regions of the superior temporal lobe (the part of the brain associated with auditory processing) and the frontal cortex (involved in complex movement planning) are involved in vowel processing, especially in the left hemisphere.. This is reminiscent of the schema underlying the understanding and production of speech in adults..

Moreover, the researchers found that the connection between these areas is observed in children who listened to sounds, but not in those who remained in silence..

Scientists conclude that talking to newborns should be already in the first hours after their birth. They emphasize that children begin to learn something new already in the first moments after birth..