The power of some soothing words from Mummy

WHETHER it’s praise for test results or soothing tones after a fall, a few words from Mummy always have a powerful effect.

Now scientists have worked out why – as a mother’s voice has a bigger impact on children’s brains than had been imagined.

As well as engaging the area responsible for processing sounds, it also triggers activity in centres involved in emotion, reward, social function and facial recognition.

And the effect is particular to each mother-child relationship, with youngsters failing to react in the same way when they hear other women speaking.

‘We know that a mother’s voice can be a source of emotional comfort to children,’ said Dr Vinod Menon, a senior author of the study. ‘We’ve [now] shown the biological circuitry underlying that.’

Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine, California, examined 24 healthy children between the ages of seven and 12, scanning their brains using MRI while they listened to sound clips.

They were played recordings of their mother and other women saying nonsense words. Even with clips less than a second long, children were able to identify their own parent with 97 per cent accuracy.

Multiple areas of the brain also showed activity when it was the mother speaking, revealing a greater neurological reaction than simply understanding the sound. Lead author Dr Daniel Abrams said: ‘Many of our social, language and emotional processes are learned by listening to our [mother’s] voice. But surprisingly little is known about how the brain organises itself around this very important sound source.

‘We didn’t realise that a mother’s voice would have such quick access to so many different brain systems.’

Earlier studies have shown that babies and youngsters prefer the maternal voice to others, but this is thought to be the first examining the biological effect on a child’s brain.

Dr Menon added: ‘The extent of the regions that were engaged was really quite surprising. Voice is one of the most important social communication cues. It’s exciting to see that the echo of a mother’s voice lives on in so many brain systems.’

The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also showed that children whose brains were most stimulated by their mother’s voice had the strongest social communication ability.

In future, examining this reaction could help doctors understand conditions in which children have difficulty communicating, such as autism.

The researchers plan to carry out similar studies with teenagers, to see if the effect of the maternal voice changes as people reach adulthood.