Challenge your newborn to a game of chess, and he or she probably won't come out on top. But a game of "Name That Tune" might be a different story. The results of a recent study conducted by a University of Helsinki researcher suggest that babies whose mothers played music for them in utero can recognize the same tunes very shortly after birth, according to Red Orbit. In the study, which included 24 women in the third trimesters of their pregnancies, half were given a CD of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and told to play it to their unborn babies five times each week, then to destroy the CD after their babies were born. When the newborns were played the same music, the brains of the babies who had heard the song in utero were more active when they heard it or a melody similar to it after birth than were the babies who had not heard the song while still in the womb. The study's findings confirm that playing music to unborn babies can stimulate the babies' brain development and lay the foundations for understanding how memory develops in the womb. Read more: Babies That Hear Music in the Womb Recognize it After Birth (RO) http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1112990474/babies-recognize-songs-before-birth-103113/
Jennifer Hambrick unites her extensive backgrounds in the arts and media and her deep roots in Columbus to bring inspiring music to central Ohio as Classical 101’s midday host. Jennifer performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago before earning a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.