Babies brains’ can follow a beat as soon as they’re born

Babies apparently come equipped with neuroscientist-worthy abilities that would make adults jealous. Two remarkable studies reveal that 2-month-old infants can already organize visual information into categories like animals and household objects, while newborns less than 48 hours old can detect when someone messes with a musical beat.

The first breakthrough required extraordinary patience: researchers successfully performed brain scans on more than 100 awake babies using what one scientist called "an IMAX for babies." The results showed infant brains categorizing objects much like adults do, contradicting the century-old belief that babies experience a "blooming, buzzing confusion."

The second study found that Hungarian newborns listening to Bach could detect rhythm disruptions but ignored scrambled melodies. This makes evolutionary sense, researchers say, since babies in the womb constantly hear rhythmic sounds like heartbeats and footsteps, while amniotic fluid muffles specific musical pitches.

"These researchers must have the patience of saints," notes one scientist about the brain-scanning feat. The discoveries suggest babies arrive with sophisticated neural toolkits, though questions remain about whether these abilities develop rapidly after birth or exist from the start.