Pregnancy tips Noise and Infant Development

I've always thought white noise was a good thing. However, for infants, it may not be. Apparently this noise might contribute to language delay because it has no distinguishable pattern. Read more:

www.webmd.com

From the article:

A new study suggests that exposing infants to continuous white noise -- commonly done to soothe infants or drown out other noises -- may delay hearing and possibly language development.


Investigators found that exposure to continuous, unpatterned sounds such as white noise delayed development of the brain's hearing center in young rats.


Unlike speech or music, white noise, such as radio static or an air conditioner's hum, is random sound with no distinguishable auditory pattern.


In their study, published April 18 in the journal Science, Edward Chang and colleague Michael Merzenich, PhD, exposed rat pups to continuous background white noise loud enough to mask normal environmental sounds, but not loud enough to damage their hearing. Development of the hearing region of the brain was compared with animals reared with normal environmental sounds.


The researchers found the rats exposed to the white noise showed a significant delay in development of the hearing center of the brain. And development in these rats did not catch up to the unexposed rats until they were three to four times older. Though hearing development was delayed, it did mature to normal adult levels once they were no longer exposed to the continuous background noise.