Did a baby’s yell wake you up in the middle of the night? Is the baby fine or hungry or needs a diaper change? You maybe clueless in the beginning as to what are the baby’s needs but the cries indicate the baby’s desires and the condition of the health, say the experts.
Research study
Undetected health problems may be indicated by the cry of a baby. A recent new research study confirms that the baby’s cry may be an important factor in indicating undetected health problems.
Who would have known that a baby’s cry may be passing a message of its own?
It’s a frustrating situation to hear the painful yelps of a baby. Generally it is the baby’s wail that pinpoints the parents that something is wrong. The cry normally indicates hunger, pain or a discomfort and it is up to the mother to guess and find the adequate means to make the baby comfortable.
The baby’s cry seems to have enamored the researchers and they have found out that subtle and delicate acoustic signs of the cry given out, by the child have loads of important information about the baby’s health condition hidden in it. In order to delve deeper into this and analyze the cries of the baby the researchers have created a new computer based tool.
Baby cry analyzer
The research team aspires that this new computer tool or the baby cry analyzer will help in the identification of children facing, neurological problems, neurological defects or some developmental disorders. The tool will also help in finding out if the child may be autistic.
Researchers from Brown University and the Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island, together comprised the research team who used the baby cry analyzer. Dr Stephen Sheinkopf from Brown University gave the opinion regarding this and stated “There are lots of conditions that may manifest in differences in cry acoustics.”
Research analysis
There are two phases to the system of the analyzing. In the first phase the tool records the cries and breaks it down into 12.5 millisecond frames. Then each frame is closed studied and checked for frequency characteristics, volume and voicing. Researchers claim, that the cries of the baby are like a “window into the brain”, and their cries potential indicators of health hassles.
Harvey Silverman, professor of engineering and director of Brown’s Laboratory for Engineering Man/Machine Systems said. “It’s a comprehensive tool for getting as much important stuff out of a baby cry that we can.” The second phase studies the data and uses it to get a broader perspective into the silence or the “wah” uttered by the child.
Researchers are hopeful that the study “will lead to new ways for researchers and clinicians to use cry in identifying children with neurological problems or developmental disorders.” They are hopeful that an early intervention maybe very helpful in developmental disorders.
