We Learn to Communicate before We’re Born

Apparently, I’ve been preparing for my career in communications since before I was born.

A new study (via Neatorama) reveals that humans begin to learn their native language in the womb. Comparisons between babies a few days old in France and Germany reveal that newborns cry — the earliest form of human communications — in their native language.

Led by Kathleen Wermke of the University of Würzburg’s Center for Prespeech Development and Developmental Disorders, a team of scientists found that fetuses are not only become familiar with the sound of their mother’s voice in the womb, they’re also learning some important communications patterns inherent in their native tongue.

French newborns, for example, tend to cry with a rising melody, whereas German newborns prefer a falling melody. Those patterns are consistent with characteristic differences between the two languages, according to Wermke. (While French children call for “Papá,” German kids want their “Pápa.”)

Did Bacteria Invent Communications?

Communications may be a fundamental principle of life. At least, that’s one of the big ideas I took away from Bonnie Bassler’s TED talk a few months ago.

A brilliant molecular biologist at Princeton University,
Dr. Bassler studies how bacteria use chemical signals to communicate with each another, enabling them to act in concert to mount attacks and coordinate defense.

This behavior — called “quorum sensing,” or bacterial communication — used to be considered a rare phenomenon. Dr. Bassler contends that nearly all bacteria do it and most do it all the time. These tiny single-celled organisms can distinguish between their own and other species, “speaking” one language within their own species and communicating with other bacteria in an interspecies language, like a form of “bacterial Esperanto.”

The pharmaceutical industry is paying careful attention to her work, since Dr. Bassler’s discoveries suggest the possibility of a new generation of antibiotics that work by interfering with the communication among pathogenic (bad) bacteria … especially resistant strains.

I have to confess, however, that as a public relations consultant, what moved me most was the notion that communicating is as natural — and fundamental — as eating, breathing or reproducing. In fact, the impulse to communicate may be hardwired in virtually every living thing.