Infant brains can provide a glimpse at future language abilities
THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 2013 11:30 AM

If parents are curious to learn how their children are developing on a cognitive level, they could have their little ones take an IQ test for kids. Parents who want to get a sense of how advanced their infants will be later in life may want to consider brain imaging, as researchers have found this can predict the state of their language abilities one year later.

In a recent University of Washington study, which appears in the journal "Brain and Language," researchers measured infants'' brain structures when they were seven months old using magnetic resonance imaging. They found that analyzing certain parts of the brain, such as the cerebellum and hippocampus, can help them predict these youths'' language abilities.

"It wasn''t the language areas of the infant brain that predicted their future linguistic skills, but instead brain areas linked to motor abilities and memory processing," said Patricia Kuhl, co-author of the study. "Infants have to listen and memorize the sound patterns used by the people in their culture, and then coax their own mouths and tongues to make these sounds in order join the social conversation and get a response from their parents."

When researchers tested the infants'' language abilities at the age of 1, they found that those whose cerebellum and hippocampus possessed a greater concentration of gray and white matter had better language skills.