This Special Music Helped Preemie Babies’ Brains Develop
Listening to music helped preterm babies' brains develop, according to the results of a new Swiss study.
Move over, Baby Einstein: New research from Switzerland shows that listening to soothing music in the first weeks of life helps encourage brain development in preterm babies.
For the study, the scientists recruited a harpist and a new-age musician to compose three pieces of music.
The Lowdown
Children who are born prematurely, between 24 and 32 weeks of pregnancy, are far more likely to survive today than they used to be—but because their brains are less developed at birth, they're still at high risk for learning difficulties and emotional disorders later in life.
Researchers in Geneva thought that the unfamiliar and stressful noises in neonatal intensive care units might be partially responsible. After all, a hospital ward filled with alarms, other infants crying, and adults bustling in and out is far more disruptive than the quiet in-utero environment the babies are used to. They decided to test whether listening to pleasant music could have a positive, counterbalancing effect on the babies' brain development.
Led by Dr. Petra Hüppi at the University of Geneva, the scientists recruited Swiss harpist and new-age musician Andreas Vollenweider (who has collaborated with the likes of Carly Simon, Bryan Adams, and Bobby McFerrin). Vollenweider developed three pieces of music specifically for the NICU babies, which were played for them five times per week. Each track was used for specific purposes: To help the baby wake up; to stimulate a baby who was already awake; and to help the baby fall back asleep.
When they reached an age equivalent to a full-term baby, the infants underwent an MRI. The researchers focused on connections within the salience network, which determines how relevant information is, and then processes and acts on it—crucial components of healthy social behavior and emotional regulation. The neural networks of preemies who had listened to Vollenweider's pieces were stronger than preterm babies who had not received the intervention, and were instead much more similar to full-term babies.
Next Up
The first infants in the study are now 6 years old—the age when cognitive problems usually become diagnosable. Researchers plan to follow up with more cognitive and socio-emotional assessments, to determine whether the effects of the music intervention have lasted.
The first infants in the study are now 6 years old—the age when cognitive problems usually become diagnosable.
The scientists note in their paper that, while they saw strong results in the babies' primary auditory cortex and thalamus connections—suggesting that they had developed an ability to recognize and respond to familiar music—there was less reaction in the regions responsible for socioemotional processing. They hypothesize that more time spent listening to music during a NICU stay could improve those connections as well; but another study would be needed to know for sure.
Open Questions
Because this initial study had a fairly small sample size (only 20 preterm infants underwent the musical intervention, with another 19 studied as a control group), and they all listened to the same music for the same amount of time, it's still undetermined whether variations in the type and frequency of music would make a difference. Are Vollenweider's harps, bells, and punji the runaway favorite, or would other styles of music help, too? (Would "Baby Shark" help … or hurt?) There's also a chance that other types of repetitive sounds, like parents speaking or singing to their children, might have similar effects.
But the biggest question is still the one that the scientists plan to tackle next: Whether the intervention lasts as the children grow up. If it does, that's great news for any family with a preemie — and for the baby-sized headphone industry.
Rooting for Your Ancestors Doesn’t Make You Racist
A group of people waving flags in a World Cup theme.
Editor's Note: This op/ed is in response to our Big Question of the month: "Should shared genetics play any role in encouraging sports fans to root for a certain team?"
A soccer fan can usually explain why he chose to love his team, but there is seldom any logic to it.
If it takes a mail-order DNA test to get you into the game, then swab your cheek and join the party.
Maybe he likes the colors, or maybe his mom grew up in the city where the team plays. Maybe a certain elegant Dutchman (Marc Overmars) played for a certain London club (Arsenal) during the most impressionable years (the late '90s, roughly) in the life of a young person (me), and that poor child continued to follow that poor club decade after losing decade, even though he lived in Florida, where games were only sometimes shown on TV and he missed most of them anyway, and, besides, this was long after the Dutchman had ceased being an employee of that club to which the young Floridian had absolutely no spiritual or economic connection.
I digress.
Maybe the fan simply picked the most dominant team at the moment he discovered the sport, thereby choosing Manchester United, which is just another way of saying he gets off on the suffering of others. Or maybe he took a mail-order DNA test, found out he was 1/12 French, and decided it would be Les Bleus or bust this summer at the World Cup.
A company called 23andMe hopes that millions of American fans, casting about for a team to support since their own failed to qualify for the World Cup, will take that last path. The TV spots hawking the service are already blanketing Fox Sports. And while I happen to think that soccer is a highly interesting sport for lots of better reasons, my position is that if it takes a mail-order DNA test to get you into the game, then swab your cheek and join the party.
The point is, soccer is an exercise in the arbitrary. Your favorite player will probably miss the goal. The referee will probably make the wrong call. Your team will probably lose. You will probably get angry and then you will get sad and then, next week, you'll start the cycle again, over and over, ultimately infecting your offspring with the same illogical obsession so that you'll have someone else to be miserable with.
Choose misery with a chance of joy, I say. Choose empathy and random connection.
Maybe, because of a DNA test, you'll choose to care about the national soccer team of Egypt or Colombia or South Korea. The best that can happen is that you might plug in with a group of people who live far away in Egypt or Colombia or South Korea. You might, for a moment, share in their suffering and delight in their triumphs. You might empathize with strangers for no other reason than the fact that your great great great great great great great great great great grandmother was born in a crude hovel somewhere in the Nile Delta.
Whoa! Cool! That's the splendor of soccer… and advances in our understanding of the human genome, I suppose.
A leading bioethicist has suggested that 23andMe's campaign could inflame racial animosity, but that seems unlikely to me, because if we could alter the allegiances and behavioral patterns of actual soccer hooligans—for better or worse—by appealing to science and reason, they would already be extinct. No, the worst that could happen is that you'll waste a few hours of your life screaming at a TV show featuring two groups of men who are being paid millions of dollars to determine who is more proficient at placing a small orb between two sticks.
Choose misery with a chance of joy, I say. Choose empathy and random connection. Choose Iceland, even though it's unlikely you have any Icelandic ancestors, because it's the smallest country ever to qualify for the World Cup and what did Iceland ever do to you? Just don't choose Germany—they don't need your help.
[Ed. Note: To read the counter viewpoint, click here. Then visit leapsmag on social media to share your opinion: Who wins this debate?]
Soccer Fans, Don’t Root for a Team Based on Genetics
A soccer ball through glass.
Editor's Note: This op/ed is in response to our Big Question of the month: "Should shared genetics play any role in encouraging sports fans to root for a certain team?"
23andMe is taking a lot of heat as one of the DNA aggregators whose databases may not be secure from prying third-party eyes. That is a huge issue, but the company is engaging in even more troubling behavior—using genetics to sponsor racism.
The ad campaign urges that you choose to root for a team based on genetics—theirs and yours.
There is plenty to condemn when it comes to racism in international sports. Fans taunting black and minority athletes is a huge problem. No sport has been as beset by racial taunting as soccer. Which is why the current advertising campaign by the genetic testing company 23andMe and Fox sports is especially foul.
With the U.S. men's team eliminated from the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, many potential American fans were left without a primary rooting interest in the upcoming summer tournament. And that would be a disaster for Fox, which will be carrying the games.
The network teamed up with 23andMe to urge American soccer fans not to tune out the World Cup. Instead the ad campaign urges that you choose to root for a team based on genetics—theirs and yours. Given the fact that ethnicity and race are mainly cultural and social constructs, not biological, this suggestion seems more 19th than 21st century in terms of its justification.
The ads say, "root for your roots." Send your spit off to 23andMe for a DNA test and you might discover most of your genes came from one of the countries that did qualify for the biggest event in soccer. Saudi Arabia, for example. Or Panama, Argentina, Serbia, Senegal or Iran. So if you and the team have the same genes - voila, you have someone and something to root for. Soccer hooligan bigots everywhere must be thrilled by this twaddle.
There is no correlation between genetics and who is a member of a nation's soccer team. People from many ethnic and racial backgrounds play for many nations. There is no Argentinian or Croatian team genotype. And why would information about your genetic ancestry lead you to root for a particular athlete or team? How about the team's skill, not their skin color or biological makeup?
What genetic difference is it that we are going to root for anyway—the immune system differences between Switzerland and Egypt?
And are there really genes to be found that determine with certainty that you or the team you are watching are really Panamanian? Hardly. Panama is a political entity that came into existence in 1903 not a biological species. And, do we really need an ad campaign telling us, falsely, that the nations of the Earth can be sorted out neatly into clear racial groups based on their heredity? What genetic difference is it that we are going to root for anyway—the immune system differences between Switzerland and Egypt? Markers for bone density between Argentinians and Russians?
The 'root for your roots' campaign comes at a horrible time, just when FIFA is trying to root the racism out of the World Cup. It is built on bogus science about the genetics of how we define nations and ethnic groups. It appeals to the racism in us to pick a team we can root for. And it reinforces racial and ethnic stereotypes about human behavior and nationhood that are rooted in history, culture, economics, colonialism and prejudice, not ancestry, genetics or biology. This is not the way to introduce the world to genetic testing.
[Ed. Note: To read the counter viewpoint, click here. Then visit leapsmag on social media to share your opinion: Who wins this debate?]