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Updated: Jul 10, 2025

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization
Published on: April 19, 2017
Prenatal experience with language shapes the brain
Benedetta Mariani1,2, Giorgio Nicoletti1,2,3, Giacomo Barzon1,2
1Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Padua, Padua, Italy.
Abstract:
Human infants acquire language with notable ease compared to adults, but the neural basis of their remarkable brain plasticity for language remains little understood. Applying a scaling analysis of neural oscillations to address this question, we show that newborns' electrophysiological activity exhibits increased long-range temporal correlations after stimulation with speech, particularly in the prenatally heard language, indicating the early emergence of brain specialization for the native language.
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