Health & Medicine
Baby Babble: Cry Analyzer May Identify Unidentified Health Issues
Kathleen Lees
First Posted: Jul 12, 2013 01:10 PM EDT
Could it be possible to translate baby babbling into the wants and needs of newborns? It may just have seemed like a distant dream from a 1992 Simpsons episode starring Danny DeVito as Homer's brother, but turns out, scientists have long been contemplating how to convert kiddo crying into adult speech.
Most parents might mistake crying for hunger, sleepiness or "Turn off that damn Raffi record!" (And, in a lot of cases, this is probably what baby wants.) But in some cases, it isn't. And thanks to researchers at Brown University and the Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island, a baby's cry could be a "window into the brain" of a child, possibly unveiling a stomach ache, a recent undiscovered injury or even developmental disorders or neurological issues.
According to researchers via a press release, they created a computer-based tool that can analyze the acoustics of crying. This incredible tool uses recorded babies' cries to break down sounds into 12.5-millisecond frames, analyzing each frame for things including volume, voicing, and frequency characteristics. With further processing of the utterances, doctors then have 80 different parameters that can help shed light on a baby's health.
Using different pitches and acoustic features could help reveal neurological issues that may change the way a baby's vocal cords function.
"There are lots of conditions that might manifest in differences in cry acoustics. Cry analysis can be a noninvasive way to get a measurement of these disruptions in the neurobiological and neurobehavioral systems in very young babies," Stephen Sheinkopf, an assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior from Brown said according to Medical Xpress.
The researchers were able to tie certain cries to possible disorders by studying different pitches, lengths, and other acoustic aspects.
We certainly think this is incredible news. Deciphering baby language is a great discovery, especially if a product like this could become easily accessible to the public. But we have to wonder, deciding between the two, would it be this, or the vibrating chair?
More information regarding this tool can be found in Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research.
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First Posted: Jul 12, 2013 01:10 PM EDT
Could it be possible to translate baby babbling into the wants and needs of newborns? It may just have seemed like a distant dream from a 1992 Simpsons episode starring Danny DeVito as Homer's brother, but turns out, scientists have long been contemplating how to convert kiddo crying into adult speech.
Most parents might mistake crying for hunger, sleepiness or "Turn off that damn Raffi record!" (And, in a lot of cases, this is probably what baby wants.) But in some cases, it isn't. And thanks to researchers at Brown University and the Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island, a baby's cry could be a "window into the brain" of a child, possibly unveiling a stomach ache, a recent undiscovered injury or even developmental disorders or neurological issues.
According to researchers via a press release, they created a computer-based tool that can analyze the acoustics of crying. This incredible tool uses recorded babies' cries to break down sounds into 12.5-millisecond frames, analyzing each frame for things including volume, voicing, and frequency characteristics. With further processing of the utterances, doctors then have 80 different parameters that can help shed light on a baby's health.
Using different pitches and acoustic features could help reveal neurological issues that may change the way a baby's vocal cords function.
"There are lots of conditions that might manifest in differences in cry acoustics. Cry analysis can be a noninvasive way to get a measurement of these disruptions in the neurobiological and neurobehavioral systems in very young babies," Stephen Sheinkopf, an assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior from Brown said according to Medical Xpress.
The researchers were able to tie certain cries to possible disorders by studying different pitches, lengths, and other acoustic aspects.
We certainly think this is incredible news. Deciphering baby language is a great discovery, especially if a product like this could become easily accessible to the public. But we have to wonder, deciding between the two, would it be this, or the vibrating chair?
More information regarding this tool can be found in Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone