{"id":523433,"date":"2026-09-11T08:31:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T12:31:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/uncategorized\/the-newborns-brain-reacts-more-to-the-crying-of-other-babies-than-to-speech\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T08:31:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T12:31:12","slug":"the-newborns-brain-reacts-more-to-the-crying-of-other-babies-than-to-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/style\/the-newborns-brain-reacts-more-to-the-crying-of-other-babies-than-to-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"The newborn’s brain reacts more to the crying of other babies than to speech"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Bilbao (Spain).-<\/strong> Research, in which the University of Deusto<\/a> (Bilbao), <\/strong>in northern Spain, has participated, has revealed that the newborn’s brain<\/strong> is more activated by the crying of other babies than by human speech, when it was traditionally thought that the latter occupied a privileged place for human beings from the beginning of life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scientific journal Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience<\/a><\/strong> has published an article on this work, carried out by an international research team in developmental cognitive neuroscience, which includes researcher Irene de la Cruz Pav\u00eda from the University of Deusto, the academic institution has reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You might be interested in: <\/strong>World Breastfeeding Week: a call to protect the rights of mothers and babies<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Previous studies had shown that babies were born with a special predisposition towards the human voice<\/strong>, partly due to the auditory experience accumulated in the womb during the last trimester of pregnancy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, this research has shown that in newborns, crying produces a stronger response in the brain than speech.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The researchers conducted an experiment involving 25 babies between one and four days old, born at the Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital<\/strong> in Paris, who had been exposed to the French language during their prenatal stage, and 27 Italian-speaking adults at the University of Padua (Italy) who had no knowledge of French whatsoever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the experiment, adults listened to sentences in French without understanding the meaning of the words, under equal processing conditions as the babies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The researchers recorded the brain responses of the participants to blocks of spoken French phrases and blocks of recorded cries from other newborns<\/strong> using a non-invasive neuroimaging technique to measure brain activity and found that while in adults the activation was significantly higher when listening to spoken phrases than when hearing cries, the opposite occurred in newborns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their neural response <\/strong>to the crying of other babies was significantly stronger than to speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For researchers, the discovery is striking<\/strong> because, from an acoustic point of view, speech is more familiar to the newborn than crying<\/strong>, since they have been hearing it inside the womb for months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They conclude that the explanation for why this was not the case could lie in the fact that both the babies and the adults in the study reacted and were more activated by what both knew how to do or produce; that is, the babies were more activated by crying and the adults by speech, even if they did not understand the language. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bilbao (Spain).- Research, in which the University of Deusto (Bilbao), in northern Spain, has participated, has revealed that the newborn’s brain is more activated by the crying of other babies than by human speech, when it was traditionally thought that the latter occupied a privileged place for human beings from the beginning of life. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":523434,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[43023,44182,44814,40563,40902],"class_list":["post-523433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-style","tag-brain","tag-cover","tag-newborn","tag-spain","tag-study"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/phj1q1-2cat","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/09\/Copia-de-Copia-de-Post-de-Instagram-Feliz-Cumpleanos-Sencillo-Minimalista-Azul-1000-x-500-px-2026-09-11T082820.280.png","dum_api":{"author_name":"EFE","author_image":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/1200px-EFE_logo.svg-96x96.png","categories_name":["Style"],"featured_media_url":"https:\/\/cdn.deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/09\/Copia-de-Copia-de-Post-de-Instagram-Feliz-Cumpleanos-Sencillo-Minimalista-Azul-1000-x-500-px-2026-09-11T082820.280.png"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/523434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}