ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2013
Learning-induced neural plasticity of speech processing before birth.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 72 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
72 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 267 citations in OpenAlex.
- The impact of sound stimulations during pregnancy on fetal learning: a systematic review.BMC pediatrics · 2023Pooled it
- Effect of Musical Stimulation on Placental Programming and Neurodevelopment Outcome of Preterm Infants: A Systematic Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Pooled it
- Creative music therapy to promote brain function and brain structure in preterm infants: A randomized controlled pilot study.NeuroImage. Clinical · 2020Trial
- Linguistic effect on speech perception observed at the brainstem.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018Trial
- Fathers, not mothers: the male singing voice and the preterm brain's response to song in the NICU.Pediatric research · 2026Article
- Newborns' brains Detect Foreign Rhythm in Native-language Speech.Developmental science · 2026Article
- Prenatal Volume in the Bilateral Superior Temporal Gyrus Associates With Children's Expressive Vocabulary at 24-36 Months.Developmental science · 2026Article
- Event-Related Brain Potentials and Frequency-Following Response to Syllables in Newborns and Adults.The European journal of neuroscience · 2026Article
- Music and Language in the Human Brain: Mismatch Negativity Evidence for Their Neuroplasticity and Interplay.The European journal of neuroscience · 2026Review
- Article
- Decoding auditory cognition: Unraveling the corticostriatal-SNr circuit's role in frequency discrimination accuracy.iScience · 2025Article
- Prenatal linguistic exposure shapes language brain responses at birth.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Dynamic changes in electrical brain activity during passive learning of foreign speech sound discrimination.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2025Article
- From Storytime to Success: Prospective Longitudinal Associations Between Toddler Literacy Enrichment and Long-Term Student Engagement in a Millennial Birth Cohort of Boys and Girls.Journal of Intelligence · 2025Article
- Evaluation of fetal exposure to environmental noise using a computer-generated model.Nature communications · 2025Article
- How did vocal communication come to dominate human language? A view from the womb.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Lateralization of Neural Speech Discrimination at Birth Is a Predictor for Later Language Development.Developmental science · 2025Article
- Music medicine and music therapy in neonatal care: a scoping review of passive music listening research applications and findings on infant development and medical practice.BMC pediatrics · 2024Article
- Article
- Lasting benefits of embryonic eavesdropping on parent-parent communication.Science advances · 2024Article
12 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 5 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Learning, the foundation of adaptive and intelligent behavior, is based on plastic changes in neural assemblies, reflected by the modulation of electric brain responses. In infancy, auditory learning implicates the formation and strengthening of neural long-term memory traces, improving discrimination skills, in particular those forming the prerequisites for speech perception and understanding. Although previous behavioral observations show that newborns react differentially to unfamiliar sounds vs. familiar sound material that they were exposed to as fetuses, the neural basis of fetal learning has not thus far been investigated. Here we demonstrate direct neural correlates of human fetal learning of speech-like auditory stimuli. We presented variants of words to fetuses; unlike infants with no exposure to these stimuli, the exposed fetuses showed enhanced brain activity (mismatch responses) in response to pitch changes for the trained variants after birth. Furthermore, a significant correlation existed between the amount of prenatal exposure and brain activity, with greater activity being associated with a higher amount of prenatal speech exposure. Moreover, the learning effect was generalized to other types of similar speech sounds not included in the training material. Consequently, our results indicate neural commitment specifically tuned to the speech features heard before birth and their memory representations.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.