Baby with headphones. Image credit: Alireza Attari (CC0)
Most people, no matter where they grow up, enjoy listening to music – and many instinctively move their bodies to it. This universal behavior raises a fascinating question: when does the brain first respond to music, and how does that ability develop?
Babies are born with a natural sensitivity to sound. Their brains can already detect patterns in what they hear, such as repeated rhythms and melodies. Scientists can measure this brain activity using an EEG (electroencephalography), which records electrical signals produced by the brain in response to sounds. Infants also naturally move their bodies in response to sounds around them. However, we do not fully understand when these two abilities – recognizing music and moving to it – emerge, or how they relate during the first year of life.
Nguyen et al. wanted to understand how babies' brain responses to music and their spontaneous body movements to music develop during the first year of life. The researchers also asked whether pitch – high or low music sounds – affects these two responses differently, since babies are known to be drawn to high-pitched sounds.
Nguyen et al. tested 79 infants aged 3, 6, and 12 months by playing children's songs and scrambled versions of the same songs. They measured brain activity using electroencephalography (EEG) while also tracking and reconstructing full-body movements from video recordings.
The results revealed that all age groups – even 3-month-olds – showed stronger brain responses to real music than to scrambled music, indicating that the brain encodes musical structure very early in life. However, only 12-month-olds spontaneously moved more to music than to scrambled music, specifically exhibiting rocking, swaying, and clapping-like movements. Importantly, no age group showed movements that were coordinated in time with the musical beat. Additionally, only 6-month-olds showed stronger brain responses to high-pitched compared to low-pitched music, while high-pitched music predicted movements at all ages.
Nguyen et al. are the first to measure both brain activity and body movement simultaneously in infants this young. Their findings will be relevant to researchers studying how children develop musical and movement skills, and how early rhythmic responses eventually give rise to dancing. They also provide valuable insights for caregivers and early childhood educators who use music to engage and support infants. Before any practical applications can be developed, future studies should examine how music-driven movement coordination continues to develop beyond 12 months and investigate the brain pathways that link hearing music to moving – and eventually dancing – to it.
