A new study simultaneously tracked infants' brain activity and spontaneous movements to music, revealing a divergence in developmental timelines. Researchers recorded EEG and body kinematics from 79 infants aged 3, 6, and 12 months while they listened to children's songs and scrambled versions. All age groups showed enhanced neural responses to music over scrambled audio, indicating early auditory encoding of musical structure. This suggests the infant brain can recognize music's patterns from just a few months old.

Movement patterns, however, developed at a slower pace. While some basic auditory-motor coupling was present throughout, complex structured movements in response to music only emerged by 12 months. Notably, no infants demonstrated coordinated movements synchronized with the musical beat. The study also found that high-pitched music predicted infant movements across all ages, though enhanced neural responses to high pitch were only observed at 6 months.

This research, utilizing markerless pose estimation alongside EEG, offers a novel look at how auditory perception and motor output develop in relation to music. The findings provide foundational data for understanding the early stages of musicality and rhythmic coordination, with potential implications for early childhood education and developmental neuroscience. Future work will explore the continued development of movement coordination beyond the first year.