A new study suggests that babies as young as 7 months old can discern a voice's emotional state.

The brains of infants demonstrate sensitivity to the human voice and to emotions communicated through the voice, which is remarkably similar to what is observed in the brains of adults the new research has found.

The study probes the origins of voice processing in the human brain and may provide important insight into neuro-developmental disorders such as autism.

Dr. Tobias Grossmann from the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development at the University of London led the study which was performed in Dr. Angela D. Friederici's laboratory at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany.

Grossmann and colleagues observed that 7-month-olds but not 4-month-olds showed adult-like increased responses in the temporal cortex in response to the human voice when compared to non vocal sounds, suggesting that voice sensitivity emerges between 4 and 7 months of age.

Dr. Grossmann further explains, "Our findings demonstrate that voice-sensitive brain regions are already specialized and modulated by emotional information by the age of 7 months and raise the possibility that the critical neuro-developmental processes underlying impaired voice-processing reported in disorders like autism might occur before 7 months."

He also says, "Therefore, in future work the current approach could be used to assess individual differences in infants'' responses to voices and emotional prosody and might thus serve as one of potentially multiple markers that can help with an early identification of infants at risk for a neuro-developmental disorder." (With Inputs from Agencies)