Cross-modal effects of multisensory prenatal stimulation on newborns’ visual attention

By 27-week gestation the brain undergoes extensive changes driven by external input, suggesting that learning occurs even before birth. Much of the sensory input that reaches the foetus has a rhythmic structure, and literature suggests that intrauterine rhythmic experience may contribute to the emergence of complex skills during postnatal life. Adult studies show that rhythm entrains attention enhancing information processing. Here, we hypothesised that exposure to rhythmic stimulation may boost attention from the earliest stages of neurodevelopment. To this end, we tested the short- and long-term effects of enriched multisensory rhythmic stimulation provided across the last trimester of gestation on visual spatial attention at birth and 2 months postpartum. Starting from 29-week gestation two groups of mothers follows a rhythmic or non-rhythmic stimulation protocol, and infants’ visuo-spatial attention skills are tested at birth and 2 months using a disengagement task in which accuracy and latency of orienting toward a peripheral target are measured as a function of the rhythmic vs random temporal structure of a central cue. Data collection is in progress: we expect rhythm to constrain the efficiency of attentional orienting differently for infants in the two groups.