Boosting your child’s intelligence has been proven to be quite simple, a study has found. So what does it come down to? A mother simply talking to her children.
Academics at Stanford University in California, US, found that just by hearing their mother’s voice, kids’ minds become more engaged.
It triggers neurons involved in emotion and reward processing, social functioning, detection of what is personally relevant and face recognition.
The researchers said this kind of brain activity could help determine the child’s social communication skills and shed light on autism.
Psychiatrist Dr Daniel Abrams and colleagues used MRI scanners on 24 healthy seven to 12 year-olds while their biological mothers and two other random women spoke “nonsense words” to them.
Hearing the mothers’ voices made an area in their brain crucial for emotion light up, and children’s social communication scores were predicted by the connections between the superior temporal sulcus and brain regions linked with emotion, memory, face perception and reward-related function.
The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first of its kind.
“Many of our social, language and emotional processes are learnt by listening to our mum’s voice,” Dr Abrams said.
“But surprisingly little is known about how the brain organises itself round this very important sound source.”
“We didn’t realise a mother’s voice would have such quick access to so many different brain systems.”
The IQ of the participants involved were at least 80, had no developmental disorders and all were being raised by their biological mothers.
“In this age range – where most children have good language skills – we didn’t want to use words that had meaning because that would have engaged a whole different set of circuitry in the brain,” Professor Venod Menon said.
When the children heard the women’s voices, even if they were less than a second long, they could still pick out their own mothers’ voices with greater than 97 per cent accuracy. It has been found that hearing their mum’s voice is an emotional comfort.
The study also linked to children gaining stronger social communication ability, which can help to understand autism.
The same researchers will be doing further studies on children with autism.
“Voice is one of the most important social communication cues. It’s exciting to see the echo of one’s mother’s voice lives on in so many brain systems,” professor Menon said.
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