The sound of mother’s voice triggers kids’ brain activity. Children can easily recognize mother’s voice as their brain responds differently to unfamiliar voice. However Stanford University School of Medicine has found a contrasting fact, while researching on children with autism. Researchers have discovered that the brain response to mom’s voice greatly differs in children with autism. The unique brain response to mother’s tune is highly diminished for such kids. Furthermore, MRI brain scans in learning and memory centers and face-processing regions detected this diminished brain response.
Dan Abrams, clinical assistant professor at Stanford has added that such kids are mostly tune out from their surrounding voices. He has also asserted that it is still under question why such kids go through difficulties while communicating. However further research on brain activity of such kids has cleared the doubt on their social communication impairment. Kids with autism often find social communication difficult due to the abnormality in their brain responses to mother’s voice. Researchers are trying to target specific neural circuits with cognitive therapies to improve the condition of kids with autism.
Brain Responses to Mom’s Voice, A Key Element for Building Social Communication Ability
Mother’s voice plays an important role in social cueing for most kids. A prior research on this has shown that the young teenagers feel more comforted through their mothers’ reassuring words. Moreover, this further proves that responding to mother’s voice triggers a distinct brain-activation signature in normal children.
Autism is a developmental disorder which mostly causes difficulties in communication along with repetitive behaviors and restricted interests. Researchers have found that the social interaction of autism kids is intrinsically less engaging than the normal children.
