Let's Rock! Even newborns can follow a rhythm

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Let’s rock! Even newborns can follow a rhythm
Infant brain responds with error signal when beat is disturbed, study finds
By Robin Nixon
LiveScience

Newborns can follow a rhythm, a new study has found, suggesting rocking out is innate.
The finding, published in the Jan. 26 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, adds to growing evidence that the newborn brain is not the blank slate it was once thought to be.

Rather, scientists have shown, at birth we already have sophisticated methods for interpreting the world. Discrimination may be crude, explained lead researcher István Winkler of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest, but "the basic algorithms are in place already."
This may be particularly true when it comes to sound. Infants as young as 2 days old can process pitch and tell if a series of notes are rising or falling in scale. And it is now known they have rhythm, too.

Newborns can't exactly swing their hips to prove they can jive, so Winkler and his colleague Henkjan Honing of the University of Amsterdam monitored the brains of 14 infants listening to variations of a rock rhythm — complete with drum, snare and high hat cymbal.
When "metrically-unimportant portions" of the beat were silenced, nothing much changed among the auditory-related activity in the brain, Honing said. But when the rhythm was disturbed, particularly by omitting the downbeat, the infant brain responded with an error signal: An expectation for a rhythmic pattern was not met.

"A baby's auditory system is working the same way as an adult's, in that it is always making predictions," Winkler said. If the prediction is incorrect, an error signal helps gauge "how much you are off the actual target," he said.

Perceiving emotion while spoken language can take more than a year to develop, "music is one of the earliest things parents have with their children," Honing said. On a note-to-note level, adult speech usually lacks the pulsing regularity of music, but when parents talk to babies, they instinctively switch to melodic and rhythmic intonations "as a way of communicating emotional messages," Honing said.

Infants can perceive anger, happiness and sadness from a caregiver's cooing and baby babble, he said. A study last year found that babies as young as 5 months can distinguish an upbeat tune, such as "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, from other gloomy tunes.

At a structural level, certain conversation protocols require rhythmic synchrony and are likely unique to humans, Winkler said. While other animals, such as birds and frogs, do have significant auditory skills, few, if any, perceive rhythm or carry on a dialogue, he said. "If you ever talk to someone who will really not synchronize with you, for example like with a computer," Winkler said, "you have the feeling that you can not communicate."

An infant's perception of rhythm may make him receptive to the distinctively human tendency to teach, Winkler said. "Apes never teach," he said, explaining that baby apes learn by simply emulating their parents. But humans engage in a sing-song form of information exchange, where the recipient of new knowledge must respond in a synchronous way (not too fast, not too slow) to convey understanding.

Therefore, evolution may have favored brains wired to rock for learning purposes, said Winkler, and "music went along for the ride."

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WHAT ARE WE LEARNING IN CLASS?

Language and Movement: Pairing language with movement sets the stage for cognitive and kinesthetic learning. The right hemisphere of the brain is our emotional side where much of our creativity is channeled. The left hemisphere organizes logical skills, such as language. When children are engaged in movements determined by the lyrics, the brain automatically cross references both hemispheres, mapping creativity and logic. (Fishburne, G. 1988).

Story from a mom in Tennessee

Discovering more than Music at Clarksville’s Kindermusik class.
By Beth Britton January 15, 2009

This morning Elle-Girl and I attended an event held in an upstairs practice room at the incredibly renovated new Mary’s Music Store downtown. The event was a preview Kindermusik class taught by Tiffany Hilliker. Kindermusik is a free form way of teaching children music by positive parent interaction and helping form a well rounded child. The class starts out with a happy hello song where you bounce your young child in your lap while singing “Hello” to the other children. The class then continues to teach predictable routine practices and interactive song and dance opportunities. The children get to experience different musical instruments and play with bright colorful streamers. The classes are completely child centered, however I must admit, the parent has a really good time as well.

As a mother of a busy toddler I thought that Elle-Girl would really get into this class. She always dances whenever music is on, she enjoys throwing mommy’s scarves up in the air and running through them, and loves singing silly songs and playing the drums on pots and pans.
However, the morning did not play out how I had imagined it. Elle-Girl did not want to sit in my lap during the “Hello” song, nor did she feel like sharing the plush puppy dog during the Sharing song. Sharing is really not a typical thing for children this age to do anyway, but some how the other toddlers in the group were than happy to pass the dog around. At one point a small duck was pulled out of Mrs. Hilliker’s box of plush animals and the usually reserved little Elle-Girl, who I swear to you has NEVER taken another toy from a child promptly stood, plush puppy dog still in hand, and took the duck from her “sharing buddy” Hayden. I didn’t feel it was necessary to try to explain Elle-Girl’s long time passion for things that go “Quack” I just quickly tried to resolve the situation.

After a cool down period with a quiet little Japanese Lullaby song, in which Elle-Girl stood looking at all the other children laying down as if to say “If you think I’m laying down for a nap at 10 in the morning, you’re crazy!” ,we all gathered together to hold hands and dance in a circle. Guess who was standing outside of the circle? Elle-Girl.

Tiffany instructed me to go ahead and join the circle, and perhaps when Elle-girl sees how much fun I’m having she will want to join. With a doubtful smile I joined in with the other mothers and their children and danced and skipped in a circle. While we were heading around and around I happen to notice what my child was doing, she was dancing along with us, but in her own circle. Even going in the direction we were going and stopping and doing the all the motions with us. I wanted her to join me, I wanted her to be like everyone else. Just then the mother beside me said something that I think will stay with me for a long time, she commented on how she was her own circle, and “what would the world be like if we didn’t have women like Oprah, or Hillary Clinton, that moved to their own circle?” you could also add women like Rosa Parks, Barbara Walters, Amelia Earhart, or my favorite Annie Lebowitz. At that moment, I found joy in my little independent girl, who has her own ideas and enjoys other children, but does not feel like she has to do what they are doing. I hope she always feels free to dance in her own circle.

I would encourage any parent to give Kindermusik a try. You never know what your child will discover there, or what you may discover about your child!

This is Anna, one of my Kindermusik Village students. She LOVES her scarves. She got some from grandma for Christmas this year.