Long before they can clap along to a song or bounce to a beat, babies may already be wired for rhythm, according to new research.
A study published in the journal PLOS Biology found that newborns can anticipate rhythmic patterns in music, even at just a few days old.
Previous research has shown that by around 35 weeks of gestation, fetuses respond to music with changes in heart rate and movement, but whether newborns could actually predict music had remained less clear.
“Newborns come into the world already tuned in to rhythm,” the authors wrote in their paper. “Even our tiniest 2-day old listeners can anticipate rhythmic patterns, revealing that some key elements of musical perception are wired from birth.”
Melody, however, may be a skill built over time. “Melodic expectations—our ability to predict the flow of a tune—don’t seem to be present yet. This suggests that melody isn’t innate but gradually learned through exposure. In other words, rhythm may be part of our biological toolkit, while melody is something we grow into.”
In their study, Roberta Bianco of the Italian Institute of Technology and an international team of colleagues recruited 49 sleeping newborns and played them piano compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach.
The playlist included 10 original melodies, as well as four altered versions in which melodies and pitches were shuffled. While the babies slept, scientists recorded their brain activity using an electroencephalogram (EEG), placing small electrodes on the infants’ heads.
The team looked for moments when brain waves indicated “surprise”—a signal that the listener expected the music to continue one way but instead heard something different.
The results revealed that newborns’ brains reacted with surprise when the rhythm changed unexpectedly, indicating that even at a few days old, babies were forming predictions based on rhythmic structure.
“Our study suggests that rhythm processing is already quite robust at birth, while melodic processing appears to be less developed, but how early experience might shape that developmental trajectory remains an open question,” Bianco told Newsweek.
The findings pointed to rhythm as a foundational component of human auditory perception. Understanding how and when these abilities emerge could help scientists map how the brain’s hearing systems develop in early life and how humans become musically aware.
The researchers said that the work also raises questions about how experience shapes musical perception. While many parents may wonder whether playing music to babies can accelerate development, the researchers caution that their study did not directly test the effects of musical exposure.
The study also did not examine broader developmental outcomes, such as language or emotional growth, but previous research offers intriguing clues.
Previous research out of the University of Washington, Seattle, found that musical intervention can enhance infants’ neural processing of timing in both music and speech.
Meanwhile, research led by psychologist Laurel Stewart found that a richer home musical environment predicts stronger gestural communication in older infants, and that parental singing is linked to better language comprehension before 12 months.
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References
Bianco, R., Tóth, B., Bigand, F., Nguyen, T., Sziller, I., Háden, G. P., Winkler, I., & Novembre, G. (2026). Human newborns form musical predictions based on rhythmic but not melodic structure. PLOS Biology, 24(2). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3003600
Papadimitriou, A., Smyth, C., Politimou, N., Franco, F., & Stewart, L. (2021). The impact of the home musical environment on infants’ language development. Infant Behavior and Development, 65. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2021.101651
Zhao, T. C., & Kuhl, P. K. (2016). Musical intervention enhances infants’ neural processing of temporal structure in music and speech. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(19), 5212–5217. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1603984113