Young babies’ brains are already specially attuned to the sounds of human voices and emotions, researchers from Kings College London have found. Three- to seven-month-old infants showed more activation in a part of the brain when they heard emotionally neutral human sounds, such as coughing, sneezing, or yawning, than when they heard the familiar sounds of toys or water.
That activity appeared in an area of the temporal lobe known in adults for its role in processing human vocalisations. The babies also showed greater response to sad sounds versus neutral ones in another part of the brain involved in emotion processing in adults.
Read more at Current Biology