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Preterm Infants Show Selective EEG Responses to Infant-Directed Speech and Maternal voice
Poster Session A, Wednesday, September 30, 11:00 am - 1:00 pm, Wangari Maathai
Kinkini Bhadra1, Anna Shiraki1, Francisca Barcos-Munos2, Damien Benis1,3, Stéphane Henriot1, Andreas Vollenweider11, Manuela Filippa1,3, Petra Hüppi1,4; 1Département de Pédiatrie, Gynécologie et Obstétrique, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland, 2Division of Pediatric Intensive Care and Neonatology, Department of Women, Children and Adolescents, University Hospital of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland, 3Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, Department of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland, 4Division of Development and Growth, University Hospitals of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
Preterm infants in the NICUs experience an atypical auditory environment, where caregiver separation and high background noise limit exposure to natural maternal voice and speech. This reduced input may hinder early auditory, speech and socio-emotional development. Infant-directed speech (IDS) contains exaggerated prosody and heightened affect which supports infant attention and early speech processing. However, little is known about how preterm infant brain processes IDS versus adult-directed speech (ADS), or how responses differ between maternal versus unfamiliar voices. We recorded 64-channel EEG from eight preterm infants (mean GA at birth= 27.446, SD=2.048 wGA; 4 male) at term-equivalent age (mean GA = 38.965, SD= 1.171 wGA) during presentation of naturalistic IDS and ADS with word ‘bébé’ spoken by each infant’s mother and by an unfamiliar mother of a preterm infant. ERPs and time–frequency (TF) responses were evaluated using non-parametric cluster permutation tests. ERP results showed a negative peak between 150–250 ms consistent with an adult-like N200 component (150–250 ms) in both speech and voice conditions. The IDS condition exhibited a slightly later N200 peak than the ADS condition, whereas maternal voice elicited an earlier N200 peak compared to stranger’s voice. These effects were observed over central–parietal sites for speech and a broader frontal–temporal–parietal distribution for voice processing. An earlier N200 is typically interpreted as reflecting more rapid stimulus evaluation and faster engagement of control or selection processes, whereas a later N200 suggests delayed recruitment of these processes, likely due to increased processing demands or greater need for attentional reconfiguration. In this context, the earlier N200 for ADS and maternal voice may indicate more efficient or rapid evaluation of salient or familiar stimuli, while the delayed N200 for IDS may reflect additional processing demands associated with shifting or maintaining the relevant attentional set, alongside more effortful stimulus evaluation mechanisms. Further, IDS–ADS TF contrasts revealed beta desynchronization and gamma (>30Hz) synchronization, reflecting greater engagement of attentional and higher-order networks. Mother–Stranger TF contrasts indicated widespread cortical synchronization for maternal voice, especially within low-frequency bands. Preliminary analyses on an expanded dataset confirm these effects, with further results to be presented at the conference as part of this ongoing study. Overall, these preliminary findings suggest that preterm infants preferentially engage with maternal voice, indicating that caregiver-related vocal cues remain highly salient despite extensive exposure to adult-directed speech in the NICU through clinical staff and routine interactions. This differential sensitivity highlights the special status of maternal voice in early auditory processing and its potential role in supporting early language-relevant neural specialization. Taken together, these results underscore the importance of sustained exposure to maternal speech and IDS in the NICU for promoting the maturation of language-related and socio-emotional brain networks in preterm infants.
Topic Areas: Language Development/Acquisition, Disorders: Developmental