Recent research by neuroscientists from Stanford University has shown that the mother’s voice has a special effect on the brain of a young child and is extremely important to him. This specific attunement only becomes blurred as children grow up and become teenagers. The mother’s voice then ceases to be privileged and their brains begin to focus on other sources.
- Children up to the age of 13 listen to their mothers’ voices with great attention, but later — with maturation — their brains prefer to focus on foreign voices
- The author of the research emphasizes that it is a completely natural process that prepares children for independence and allows them to discover the world
- The mother’s voice can also lower the level of stress hormones, which was proved by Leslie Seltzer by examining how the same written message affects girls and how the same message expressed by their mothers
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Research on how children and adolescents read their mothers’ voices was conducted by neurologist Daniel Abrams of Stanford University School of Medicine, who published the results in the April issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. According to his work, young children’s brains are especially tuned to the voice of their mothers, which plays a central role in their lives. However, as children begin to expand their social ties beyond the family, their brains adapt to the world unfolding before them and tune in to ever new sounds and voices.
In the study, a team led by Abrams performed brain scans of children between the ages of 7 and 16, examining how the voices of their mother and women who were completely unfamiliar to them would affect them. To simplify the experiment and examine the sound itself, and not the words to which children might react in a characteristic way, the women uttered gibberish clusters of words – teebudieshawlt, keebudieshawlt, and peebudieshawlt. When children and teenagers listened to women’s voices, certain parts were activated in their brains, and this allowed the results to be compared to those from previous experiments.
Changes are taking place in teenagers’ brains. Their mother’s voices are no longer special to them
Earlier studies that Abrams’ team carried out on children between the ages of 7 and 12 found that certain areas of their brains, in particular those involved in detecting rewards and paying attention, were more responsive to their mother’s voice than to an unknown woman. Interestingly, in adolescence, it occurs in the brain, revalues, and teens react more strongly to unknown voices than to their mothers’ voices. Abrams determined in subsequent experiments that this change appeared to occur between the ages of 13 and 14.
The neurologist says that the point is not that the maturing areas of adolescents’ brains stop responding to the mother’s voice, but that other, unknown voices become more noteworthy and satisfying for them. Abrams emphasizes that the changes taking place in teenagers’ brains are perfectly normal and necessary for development. It is thanks to them that they are more interested in the world and are ready to discover it and become independent in the future.
The fact that the voice of mothers is very important in development is also demonstrated by the research conducted by the biological anthropologist Leslie Seltzer of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who in a 2011 study found that when stressed girls heard their mothers’ voices on the phone, they calmed down because the levels of stress hormones in their bodies were falling. Importantly, when the same words were not spoken by the mothers, but came to them in text form, the stress level did not decrease.
«As we mature, our survival depends less and less on our mother’s support and more on our group ties with our peers » — told Seltzer about her discoveries, as reported by Science News.
According to the researcher, it is not possible to state unequivocally whether the observed neural change is universal. After all, there are different parenting styles, some children have a history of neglect or abuse, and they can certainly influence research results. However, the current results support the notion that the brain changes, thus reflecting new needs that arise with time and experience.
For the proper development of a children’s brain, it is worth using natural preparations, e.g. Omega Smart Kids Bioherba Children’s Oil, which contains, among others, walnut oil and evening primrose oil.