Junior Researcher, Research Institute for Science and Engineering, Waseda University

Visiting Scientist, Language Development Subgroup, Laboratory for Molecular Mechanism of Brain Development, RIKEN Center for Brain Science

https://researchmap.jp/naoto_yamane

For most infants, music is represents a familiar type of sound input. Just as infants come to understand their spoken language, they acquire basic musical knowledge through natural exposure to music without training. I am interested in when and how do infants acquire such abilities, and how they come to create and to perform music.

When we talked to pre-linguistic infants, unconsciously, our speech style is acoustically modulated. Such a speech style is often are called as ""melodious"". In addition, fathers and mothers not only talk to their infant, but also sing to their infants across cultures. I am interested in whether infants are born with the ability to have already recognized distinguish independently both speech prosody and from singing sung melody, early in life or they come gradually learn to differentiated each otherthe two types of sound throughout their development.