Singing to the newborn brain uncovers early traces of specialized neural networks

Song, a human cultural universal, fuses music and speech into a single auditory signal, one of the first among infants' auditory experiences. While parents sing to their babies in all human cultures, we still know little about how this experience shapes babies' perception abilities and their neural correlates. This work, therefore, investigates how the newborn brain processes song compared to its two components, speech and hummed melody. Specifically, we test the hypothesis that by regularizing the rhythm of speech, song may support language acquisition. Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), we found that newborns' (n = 40) showed stronger responses for both speech and song in the right temporoparietal regions than activation triggered by humming. Despite their clear acoustic distinctions, no significant differences were observed between the neural response of speech and song. This suggests that singing, just like speech, may represent a salient input for the newborn brain, potentially supporting early speech perception and language development.