Objective: To examine whether prenatal exposure to music and voice alters foetal behaviour and whether foetal response to music differs from human voice.
Subjects and methods: A prospective observational study was conducted in 20 normal term pregnant mothers. Ten foetuses were exposed to music and voice for 15 s at different sound pressure levels to find out the optimal setting for the auditory stimulation. Music, voice and sham were played to another 10 foetuses via a headphone on the maternal abdomen. The sound pressure level was 105 db and 94 db for music and voice, respectively. Computerised assessment of foetal heart rate and activity were recorded. 90 actocardiograms were obtained for the whole group. One way anova followed by posthoc (Student-Newman-Keuls method) analysis was used to find if there is significant difference in foetal response to music and voice versus sham.
Results: Foetuses responded with heart rate acceleration and motor response to both music and voice. This was statistically significant compared to sham. There was no significant difference between the foetal heart rate acceleration to music and voice.
Conclusion: Prenatal exposure to music and voice alters the foetal behaviour. No difference was detected in foetal response to music and voice.