Talking to Your Toddler Boosts Brain Development, Study Finds

Talking to your toddler helps shape their developing brain, a new study finds. The study included 163 babies and toddlers who wore recording devices for up to 16 hours a day over the course of three days. Researchers captured more than 6,200 hours of language data, including adult speech, interactive conversations, and words from the little ones themselves. The children also had MRI scans to measure brain myelin while they slept.

Myelin forms an insulating layer around nerves in the brain, making signals more efficient. The lead author says, "What we found is that the toddlers who heard more speech in their everyday environment also had more myelin, which is likely to support more sophisticated language processing." He adds that while more research is needed, the message to caregivers is clear: talk to your baby, your toddler, your child.