2023-05-15 18:00:00
To help your child develop well, you have to talk to him… If the conclusion of the researchers from the University of East Anglia seems logical enough, their work – presented in the review Journal of Neuroscience – above all, allow us to better understand the cerebral development of toddlers under the age of 2 and a half.
Brain development: language promotes myelination in toddlers
To study the link between language and brain development in children, researchers had 163 babies wear a small recording device for three days. They thus captured 6,208 hours of linguistic data, including the speech of adults, the turns of conversation and the words spoken by the toddlers themselves. In addition, an MRI was performed on the young participants while they slept.
The researchers found that the two-and-a-half-year-olds who heard the most words daily had a greater amount of myelin in areas of the brain related to language. “Myelin is made up of protein and fatty substances and forms an insulating layer around nerves in the brain. It makes brain signals more efficient”explains Professor John Spencer, lead author of the work, in a communiqué.
Talking to Your Baby to Shape Their Brain
“Imagine you have a garden hose with lots of holes in it. Myelin would be like wrapping the garden hose with duct tape: it insulates the fibers, carrying more ‘signal’ from one area of the brain to the next. “, explains Professor Spencer. And for him, this greater concentration of myelin would promote the development of more sophisticated language processing.
The expert adds:previous work has shown a similar association in children four to six years old, but our findings push this association much earlier in development. Indeed, we even found links between language input and brain structure in six-month-old infants.”. “While there is still much to learn about these processes, the message is clear – talk to your baby, your toddler, your child. Not only are they listening, your language input is literally shaping their brains”adds the researcher.
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