**The Power of a Mother’s Voice: How Reading to Premature Infants Boosts Brain Development**
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — For Kristine Atom and her son Kieran, afternoon time often starts with reading. But the sound of Mom’s voice has already done more than just spark his imagination — it may have helped develop it.
“My oldest child was actually also premature,” Atom shared. “So this is our second premature baby and he was in the NICU for, I think, basically up until his due date.”
Over those 10 weeks, she read to Kieran in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). But why was that so valuable?
A newly released clinical trial conducted at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital by Stanford researcher Dr. Melissa Scala and her colleagues offers an answer.
**Recreating the Womb Experience Through a Mother’s Voice**
The research team recorded mothers of premature infants reading from the classic children’s book *Paddington Bear*. The goal was to play the mothers’ voices for their premature babies several hours each night, mimicking the auditory experience that unborn infants typically receive during the final months in the womb.
“We know that babies can hear from about 24 weeks of gestation, so it’s interesting that this predates when the baby is actually born,” Dr. Scala explained. This period in the womb allows unborn babies to engage in a kind of neurological listening — a vital process that premature infants might miss out on when born early.
Several years ago, ABC7 News profiled a separate Stanford study highlighting the powerful bond unborn infants develop with their mother’s voice over others. Dr. Scala and her team suspected that this same auditory connection might be crucial for neural development as well.
**Why the Mother’s Voice Matters**
“Actually, it’s interesting. A baby who’s born full-term prefers their mother—their mother’s voice—to other female voices, and the language of their parents to other languages,” Dr. Scala said.
To explore the underlying physical factors, the team used MRI scans to compare the brains of babies who had been read to against a control group. The scans revealed increased neural development in areas associated with language processing among the infants exposed to maternal voices.
“And we were amazed to see the strength of the effect that we got,” Dr. Scala said.
**Looking Ahead**
The researchers hope to validate these promising findings with a larger sample size and to extend their study to infants with more severe health challenges.
While Atom and her son Kieran weren’t part of the clinical trial, the family believes this evidence points to a simple yet powerful resource that all families of premature infants should have access to: the sound of Mom’s voice.
“Yes, I think it’s super important to provide that,” Atom emphasized, “both because of the stress on the whole family as well as the benefit for the babies and the family as a whole.”
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**MORE:** Bay Area hospital’s lullaby program improving birthing outcomes, bonding moms and babies
https://abc7news.com/post/stanford-study-finds-moms-voice-may-help-premature-babies-develop-language-skills/18006994/
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