Prenatal Music Exposure to Enhance Postnatal Language Development

Overview

The goal of this randomized controlled study is to evaluate the effect of prenatal music exposure on infants through two years of age. The study addresses two primary questions: * Whether prenatal music exposure enhances neural encoding of speech and improve language and cognitive outcomes during the first two years of life among fetuses * Whether predictive models can be developed from available fetal data to forecast individual differences in developmental outcomes among fetuses exposed to prenatal music. Participants will engage in music listening or self-learning five days a week until delivery. After the participants give birth, the children will be followed up on their neural responses to speech, as well as their language and cognitive development, until they reach two years of age. The investigators will compare the effects of low- and high-dose prenatal music exposure with a control group receiving education and develop models to predict outcomes in fetuses exposed to prenatal music.

\[BACKGROUND\] Fetuses can hear in the womb from as early as 20 weeks of gestation. Research has shown that prenatal music and spoken language experiences are related to better neural and behavioral outcomes at birth. These findings, though focused on outcomes shortly after birth, are consistent with a larger body of research showing positive effects of postnatal music training on children's language and cognitive outcomes. \[AIM OF STUDY\] Objective 1: To examine whether prenatal music exposure leads to better neural encoding of speech and better language and cognitive developmental outcomes up to two years of life. Objective 2: To construct predictive models using fetal data (e.g., fetal brain MRI and ultrasound data, if available) to forecast individual differences in developmental outcomes among fetuses exposed to prenatal music. \[HYPOTHESIS\] The investigators hypothesize that prenatal music exposure can strengthen a fetus's neural encoding of speech from birth, leading to better language and cognitive development in early childhood. The investigators further hypothesize that, despite the expected heterogeneity in intervention effects, fetal features can predict how much a fetus would benefit from prenatal music exposure.