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Jul 11

‘Cry analyzer’ helps identify neurological or developmental disorders in infants

A new tool out of Brown analyzes the acoustic signal of a baby's cry to alert caregivers of potential problems.

(Credit: Mike Cohea/Brown University)

Much as we parents like to think we know our babies best, subtle clues lurk in their cries that are, for the most part, imperceptible to the human ear, and they can reveal important information about a child’s health.

So researchers at Brown University and Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island hope their new computer-based cry analyzer will help researchers, clinicians, and caregivers identify possible neurological or developmental issues at a very young age.

“There are lots of conditions that might manifest in differences in cry acoustics,” developer Stephen Sheinkopf, assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown, said in a school news release. “For instance, babies with birth trauma or brain injury as a result of complications in pregnancy or birth, or babies who are extremely premature, can have ongoing medical effects. Cry analysis can be a noninvasive way to get a measurement of these disruptions in the neurobiological and neurobehavioral systems in very young babies.”

Reporting in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, researchers … [Read more]