Why do babies beloved music and so much?

Whether information technology's nursery rhymes, Mozart, Queen or Infant Shark, most babies are absorbed past music. But what is it most these tunes that they're enjoying? Are all babies built-in musical? Where does their musicality come from (and when)? And can music actually impact their development?

With a ba and a pa and a wheeeeeoooo, Tom Service is on a mission to find out. Here's some of the things we learned from this special edition of The Listening Service. Boop boop!

Our relationship with music starts long before we're born

Tom meets Dr Laurel Trainor, an expert on musical development in children and adults, who reveals how babies can kickoff to hear the world around them months before birth. Nosotros learn not just that babies' auditory systems part from the sixth prenatal month, only babies actually kickoff to form musical memories while nevertheless inside the womb. Hear more in this fact-packed prune.

Music is an active experience for babies – and parents should get involved

"From their earliest days, infants are trying to engage actively in music," says Trainor. "As soon as they can starting time making responses, they do. Certainly towards the cease of the first yr, you can see overt signs that they are trying to engage in the music by singing along, clapping, and moving their bodies."

Actively engaging with music helps children develop faster than merely listening to information technology

Then what can parents do to assistance their children develop musically? They can start by getting stuck in. Trainor's research has revealed measurably different outcomes for children who engage with their parents in a music grouping, as opposed to those whose experience of music is merely passive.

"The infants in active engagement music classes show superior early linguistic communication learning," she says. "They're socially more advanced, easier to soothe, and grin more children [who are] just exposed to passive music listening."

Withal, the so-called 'Mozart issue' probably doesn't exist

The idea that Mozart'due south music in detail is hard-wired to make kids brainier is both popular and pervasive. But before you lot spend a fortune on downloads, listen to this.

"A number of years agone, at that place were some studies published that suggested that the music of Mozart was special and enhanced cognition, particularly spatial cognition," says Trainor. "Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to exist much evidence for this." The cognitive boost we become from music is much more likely to be to do with mood, non genre. And it doesn't affair whether you lot're playing Mozart, Mahler or The Monkees.

"If you play any music that people similar and is happy, information technology gives an immediate heave to cerebral performance," says Trainor. "Probably what was measured in that initial report is that if you play something that'southward energetic and happy, we basically get better immediately at everything nosotros're doing."

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: babies are probable to adopt his jauntier numbers

Then don't get hung up on the soundtrack to playtime. Babies have neither the ability nor the motivation to differentiate between genres – unlike adults, who invariably insist on doing so, often to their detriment.

We know quite a lot near the kind of music that babies prefer

Babies are stimulated almost by music with a fast tempo that mimics their eye rates (which are much faster than those of adults). They also respond positively to rhythmic regularity and musical repetition. So while there's nothing special nigh Mozart, there's no doubt that some of his faster numbers would hit a inferior audience's sweet spot.

So, is there such a thing every bit the perfect baby listening experience? In 2016, psychologists at Goldsmiths College teamed up with the singer-songwriter Imogen Heap to develop a mood-enhancing runway for babies. They surveyed 2,300 parents and found that the sounds nigh likely to make infants happy included sneezing (51%), animal noises (23%) and baby laughter (28%).

The resulting rails, The Happy Song, features all of these things – plus raspberries, rhythmic plosive sounds (similar pa and ba) and that nippy tempo that babies dearest so much.

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The universal ability of the lullaby

Not all baby music is well-nigh stimulation and happiness. In fact, there's a whole realm of music that'southward designed to destimulate babies. Going back all the same further, we run into that humans take been using this music to alter children's moods and behaviours throughout history.

Lullabies have been used for thousands of years to soothe children to sleep. And, equally far equally we can tell, they're universal to all cultures. As Trainor explains: "Infants are actually bad at controlling their state. They rely on caregivers to help them command their country, to calm them down when they're tired and need to sleep." That'due south as true of infants now every bit it was for those 5,000 years agone in Aboriginal Mesopotamia.

The science suggests that music of a boring tempo, with free motion and footling modify or surprise, turns off pain receptors in our brains to set up usa for slumber. "The lullaby is not usually just an auditory experience – it'southward really a multi-sensory experience," adds Trainor. "Typically when you sing a lullaby... you're also belongings and rocking the infant. The infant is getting simultaneous rhythmic data from the lullaby AND from the rocking."

Tom Service explores the fascinating art and science of writing music for tiny people in a special episode of The Listening Service. Subscribe at present on BBC Sounds.

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