The impact of prenatal and postnatal acoustic experience to the discrimination of native versus non-native linguistic rules in the brain: insights from combined electrophysiological and vascular signals in 3-month-olds
Sonja Rossi, Isabella Thurner, Annika Rackl, Jenny Tippmann, Hellmuth Obrig · 2026
Read The impact of prenatal and postnatal acoustic experience to the discrimination of native versus non-native linguistic rules in the brain: insights from combined electrophysiological and vascular signals in 3-month-olds by Sonja Rossi, Isabella Thurner, Annika Rackl, Jenny Tippmann, Hellmuth Obrig (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13276584.txt.
Description
Sonja Rossi and co-authors report a 2026 journal article on how sound experience before and after birth shapes a baby's language brain. Fetuses hear mostly slow features of speech, like stress patterns, through the womb's filtering. Fine sound rules, which sounds may follow which, only become clear after birth.
Three-month-olds listened to made-up words following native or foreign rules for stress and sound order. Two brain methods ran together: scalp electrodes for timing and light-based imaging for location. Both methods showed recognition responses, stronger for foreign rules in both feature types. Light imaging found mature right-side activity for stress patterns. Sound-order rules still drew immature two-sided activity. The authors credit prenatal exposure for the head start on stress patterns and postnatal exposure for finer sound learning.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Sonja Rossi, Isabella Thurner, Annika Rackl, Jenny Tippmann, Hellmuth Obrig |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 71466 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |