Human newborns can propel themselves to their mother's breast when positioned skin to skin on her abdomen just after birth. For decades, researchers have considered this primitive crawling behavior a spinal reflex, immune to supra spinal control. However, recent research suggests that neonatal crawling is already responsive to visual and olfactory stimuli processed at a supra spinal level. Here we report that a few hours post birth, French newborns can also modulate their crawling in response to their native language – a source of information that is processed supra-spinally. The crawling patterns of 23 French-born newborns were recorded on video and via an infrared motion capture system during two randomly ordered 2-min trials. The newborns were secured on a mini skateboard to facilitate arm and leg movements during their crawling propulsion. They heard a repetitive sequence of the same sentences either in French, their native language, or in English, a rhythmically different and hence discriminable unfamiliar language, on each trial. In French, compared to English, crawling was enhanced, with significantly more arm and leg steps and significantly more and larger trunk rotations in the cephalo-caudal axis. Moreover, newborns rotated their heads and trunk toward the appropriate loud speaker when hearing French but not English. These preliminary findings suggest that newborn crawling is not a simple stereotyped reflex under spinal control, but a complex pattern that can be modulated in response to higher-order, supra-spinally processed stimuli. The findings open fascinating questions about the range of stimuli to which newborn crawling is responsive.

中文翻译：

---

新生儿根据他们的母语而不是另一种语言来调节他们的爬行

刚出生后，当人类新生儿将皮肤贴在她的腹部时，可以将自己推向母亲的乳房。几十年来，研究人员一直认为这种原始的爬行行为是一种脊柱反射，不受脊柱以上控制的影响。然而，最近的研究表明，新生儿爬行已经对在脊髓上方处理的视觉和嗅觉刺激产生反应。在这里，我们报告说，出生后几个小时，法国新生儿也可以根据他们的母语调整他们的爬行——一种在脊髓上处理的信息来源。在两个随机排序的 2 分钟试验中，23 名法国出生的新生儿的爬行模式被记录在视频上并通过红外线动作捕捉系统。新生儿被固定在一个迷你滑板上，以促进他们在爬行推进过程中的手臂和腿部运动。在每次试验中，他们听到了相同句子的重复序列，要么是法语，他们的母语，要么是英语，这是一种节奏不同，因此可以辨别的陌生语言。在法语中，与英语相比，爬行得到了增强，手臂和腿的步数明显增加，头尾轴的躯干旋转明显更多和更大。此外，当听到法语而不是英语时，新生儿会把头和躯干转向合适的扬声器。这些初步发现表明，新生儿爬行不是脊髓控制下的简单刻板反射，而是一种复杂的模式，可以响应高阶、超脊髓处理的刺激进行调节。这些发现提出了一些有趣的问题，即新生儿爬行对刺激的反应范围。