Sound of Mom's Voice Makes Children Light Up With Joy, Studies Suggest

A mother's voice might mean more to a child than anyone could ever predict, a new study has found. A team of researchers from the Stanford University has found that a mother's voice activates several parts of the brain of the child.

The brain regions that literally 'light up' when a child hears his or her mom's voice included the areas associated with reward and emotion, in addition to social functions. According to the researchers, a child is able to perform facial recognition upon hearing a mother's voice and is also able to detect what is personally relevant to him or her.

One key thing that the researchers observed was that this sought of child behavior and neurological reaction only occurred when it was the voice of the kid's mom. That is, the neurological reaction did not take place in case of any other woman.

According to researcher Daniel Abrams, a kid learns a majority of social, emotional and language processes from his or her mom. However, it was unknown until now how the brain processes the voice of the mother and organizes itself around it.

The research team was fascinated to see how a mother's voice could infiltrate different areas of the child's brain. While studies previously conducted proved that a child tends to favor their mother's voice, the new study demonstrates the mechanism behind it.

The brain scans of the children were analyzed as they listened to their mothers, and some other unfamiliar women. The children were 97 percent accurate in identifying their mother's voice, even when they spoke for less than a second.

The complete details of the study have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.