Mother's Voice Triggers Activity In Several Brain Regions Of Their Children

Researchers have found that the brain regions of children's are more engrossed by the voice of their own mothers compared to the voices of women unknown to them. They also found that the mother's voice does not only activate the auditory areas of the brain.

Stanford University School of Medicine researchers studied 24 children aged 7-12 with IQs of at least 180, according to Science Daily. All children were reared by their biological mothers and there was no one with developmental disorders.

Their parents filled up a questionnaire that looked into the children's social skills. Each of the children's mothers and two women strangers were recorded saying three nonsense words.

Children's brains light up at their mother's voice: The sound of a mother's voice (illustrated by a stock pic... https://t.co/yHfFnq2N7h

— Terri Ashworth (@T_Ashworth1) May 17, 2016

Children Recognized Their Mother's Voice Quickly

Magnetic resonance imaging was used to scan the children's brains as they listened to clips of the nonsense-word recordings. The children were able to identify their mother's voices with more than 97 percent accuracy even though the clips were less than a second long.

The brain regions in the children responsible for detection what is personally relevant, emotion, face recognition, reward and social function were also affected by the mother's voice, Daily Mail reported. Additionally, children who had the best social communication skills were reportedly also those that had the strongest reaction to their mother's voices.

Speedy Identification Of Mother's Voice Backed Up By Brain Regions

"We know that hearing [their] mother's voice can be an important source of emotional comfort to children. Here, we're showing the biological circuitry underlying that," lead study author Daniel Abrams said in a statement, as per Live Science. Abrams is an instructor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine.

The researchers also reportedly noted that the great number of brain regions activated offers a possible explanation to the quick identification of the mother's voice by their children. According to Science Daily, this is the first study that assessed the brain scans of children who were listening to their mother's voices. It was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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