Born to dance! Study: babies have rhythm from birth

Fun

Express newspaper

06/02/2026 20:50

Some people seem to be born with rhythm – and a new study shows there's some truth to that.

Scientists discovered that newborns can anticipate musical patterns from just two days after birth, coming into the world "in sync" with the music.

This may explain why some very young children nod their heads to the beat or simply cannot sit still when they hear a melody.

For the study, a team from the Italian Institute of Technology played piano compositions by JS Bach to 49 sleeping newborn babies.

It included 10 original tunes and four mixed songs, with the melodies and keys distorted.

While the babies listened, the researchers used electroencephalography (EEG) – electrodes placed on the head – to measure their brain activity.

When babies showed signs of surprise, it indicated that they expected the song to go one way, but it went the other way.

The analysis showed that newborns often showed surprise when the tempo changed suddenly – indicating that the “mini-maestros” had formed musical expectations based on rhythm, the researchers said.

According to the authors, understanding how humans become aware of rhythm could help biologists understand the development of our auditory systems.

However, they found no evidence that infants followed melody – the change in pitch and flow of the song – suggesting that this ability develops later in life.

Future studies could investigate how exposure to music during pregnancy affects the development of rhythm and melody.

"Are newborns ready for Bach?" researchers write in the journal PLOS Biology.

"Newborns come into the world already in sync with rhythm. Our latest study shows that even the youngest listeners, as young as two days old, can anticipate rhythmic patterns, revealing that some key elements of musical perception are present from birth."

But there's a twist: melodic expectations – our ability to predict the flow of a song – seem to have yet to develop.

"This suggests that melody is not innate, but is gradually learned through exposure. In other words, rhythm may be part of the human biological hardware, while melody is something we develop over time."

The team suggests that newborns' rhythmic ability may be linked to the sensory environment they experience in the womb.

This includes auditory stimuli, such as the sound of the mother's heartbeat, as well as vestibular - balance - stimuli, such as the rhythm of her walking. /GazetaExpress/