Baby talk: Talking to toddlers boost early brain development, study finds

Toddlers who heard more speech in everyday life had more myelin in their brains, researchers found

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The more you talk to a toddler, the more it helps their brains to develop in early childhood, a study has found.

Researchers discovered that two-and-a-half-year-olds who heard more speech in everyday life had more myelin in language-related areas of their brains.

Myelin is a material produced by the body that forms around nerves, including those in the brain, that allows electrical impulses to transmit quickly and efficiently.

Scientists from the University of East Anglia said their findings demonstrate how speaking to toddlers can shape their developing brains.

The study, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, involved 163 babies and toddlers being given small recording devices to wear for three days.

Researchers analysed just over 6,000 hours of language data in total, including words spoken by the children and speech from adults.

When the children were asleep, they were carefully placed in an MRI scanner to measure myelin in their brains. The researchers found that toddlers who heard more speech everyday had more myelin, which they said is “likely to support more sophisticated language processing”.

Lead researcher Prof John Spencer, from UEA’s School of Psychology, said: “We know that children’s brains develop very rapidly in the first two years of life, with brain volume at about 80 per cent that of an adult brain by the age of two.

“Myelin is made up of protein and fatty substances and forms an insulating layer around nerves in the brain.”

He added: “Imagine you have a hosepipe with lots of holes in it.

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“Myelin is like wrapping the hosepipe with duct tape – it insulates neural fibres, bringing more of the ‘signal’ from one brain area to the next.”

The researchers said their study is one of the first to show that listening to speech is associated with brain structure early in development.

Prof Spencer said: “Prior work showed a similar association in four to six-year-olds, but our findings push this association much earlier in development. Indeed, we even found associations between language input and brain structure in six-month-old infants.”

He added: “Although there is still much more to learn about these processes, the message to caregivers is clear – talk to your baby, your toddler, your child.

“Not only are they listening, but your language input is literally shaping their brains.”

Additional reporting by PA