Enrichment of In Utero Rhythmic Experience Promotes Postnatal Visuospatial Attention
4 affiliations
- 1Department of Psychology University of Milano‐Bicocca Milan Italy
- 2Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology Fondazione IRCCS Ca’ Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico Milan Italy
- 3Department of Clinical Sciences and Community Health University of Milan Milan Italy
- 4NICU Fondazione IRCCS Ca' Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico Milan Italy
Abstract
By 2 months of age, infants leverage predictable temporal structures to optimize attention allocation, disengaging faster from rhythmic than nonrhythmic stimuli—a pattern absent in newborns and attributed to postnatal experience. Here, we investigated whether prenatal rhythmic enrichment provides an earlier foundation for this competence. From week 29 until delivery, pregnant women (N = 101) provided fetuses either multisensory rhythmic stimulation (experimental, N = 49) or nonrhythmic relaxation (control, N = 52). Visual attention disengagement was assessed using an overlap task with rhythmic, nonrhythmic, and static stimuli, at birth (N = 30 per group) and 2 months (N = 30 per group). At 2 months, both groups showed the expected attentional cost for nonrhythmic stimuli. At birth, this pattern appeared only in the experimental group, indicating that prenatal rhythmic enrichment accelerates the typical developmental timeline for temporal attention tuning. Individual differences further showed that greater amounts of prenatal rhythmic stimulation predicted faster overall disengagement at birth, and a stronger cost for nonrhythmic stimuli at 2 months. While acknowledging methodological constraints inherent to the population under study, these findings suggest that the developing brain begins to tune to environmental temporal structure prenatally, and that this process is promoted by in utero rhythmic experience.
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BibTeX
@article{arioli2026enrichment,
title = {{Enrichment of In Utero Rhythmic Experience Promotes Postnatal Visuospatial Attention}},
author = {Martina Arioli and Valentina Silvestri and Melissa Savoldi and Niccolò Giovannini and Maria Lorella Giannì and Lorenzo Colombo and Viola Macchi Cassia},
journal = {Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1111/nyas.70441},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.70441},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Enrichment of In Utero Rhythmic Experience Promotes Postnatal Visuospatial Attention
AU - Martina Arioli
AU - Valentina Silvestri
AU - Melissa Savoldi
AU - Niccolò Giovannini
AU - Maria Lorella Giannì
AU - Lorenzo Colombo
AU - Viola Macchi Cassia
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/01
JO - Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
DO - 10.1111/nyas.70441
UR - https://doi.org/10.1111/nyas.70441
AB - By 2 months of age, infants leverage predictable temporal structures to optimize attention allocation, disengaging faster from rhythmic than nonrhythmic stimuli—a pattern absent in newborns and attributed to postnatal experience. Here, we investigated whether prenatal rhythmic enrichment provides an earlier foundation for this competence. From week 29 until delivery, pregnant women (N = 101) provided fetuses either multisensory rhythmic stimulation (experimental, N = 49) or nonrhythmic relaxation (control, N = 52). Visual attention disengagement was assessed using an overlap task with rhythmic, nonrhythmic, and static stimuli, at birth (N = 30 per group) and 2 months (N = 30 per group). At 2 months, both groups showed the expected attentional cost for nonrhythmic stimuli. At birth, this pattern appeared only in the experimental group, indicating that prenatal rhythmic enrichment accelerates the typical developmental timeline for temporal attention tuning. Individual differences further showed that greater amounts of prenatal rhythmic stimulation predicted faster overall disengagement at birth, and a stronger cost for nonrhythmic stimuli at 2 months. While acknowledging methodological constraints inherent to the population under study, these findings suggest that the developing brain begins to tune to environmental temporal structure prenatally, and that this process is promoted by in utero rhythmic experience.
SN - 0077-8923
SN - 1749-6632
ER -