Babies Have Musical Sense

Even before babies have acquired language, they exhibit a marked capacity for reacting to music,” says the journal Scientific American. According to the report, babies are able to detect differences in musical tones and changes in both the tempo and the rhythm of the music. They are also able to recognize a melody even when it is played in a different key. Babies as young as two months show a preference for consonant musical sounds (harmony) over discordant sounds. “Peter Hepper of Queen’s University in Belfast,” says the report, “found that about two weeks before birth, fetuses recognized the difference between the theme music of [a popular] TV show, heard daily by their mothers for weeks, and a novel song.”