The Science

Smarter Sleep is based on decades of peer-reviewed, clinical research on: infants’ development of neuronal networks to support language acquisition and processing; the importance that salient acoustic cues play in that process; and the negative impact that auditory environments lacking such cues might have on language development, particularly during sleep.  

SUMMARY:

How Children Build Their Brains for Language

The foundation of lifelong cognitive and physical  performance is created early in life

As babies grow, they create billions of neuronal connections, establishing networks to perform fundamental brain functions

• Genes set the stage for forming these connections, but environmental input is also essential
• Critical periods are windows in time when infants are especially receptive to specific environmental inputs that help shape their brains (plasticity) and create the networks important to cognitive function

The 1st year is a critical period for language, when an infant builds their acoustic map (the collection of neuronal connections that process the  phonemes of their native language)

• Phonemes are the basic units of sound that distinguish words, e.g., in English, the p and b sounds in pad and bad​
• To learn language, a child must be able to proficiently analyze and decode phonemes (that occur in the tens of milliseconds) in an incoming sound stream so they can take the steps necessary to acquire language: identifying individual phonemes; recognizing phoneme patterns that make words; and associating words with objects, actions, sensations, etc.

Acoustic maps are shaped through infants’  interaction with their auditory environments

• Auditory cues help brains identify the phonemes that occur most often in their environment (the phonemes of the baby’s primary language)
• Focusing on those phonemes encourages the brain to create precise connections among the individual neurons that fire together in response to each phoneme
• Strong connections create an accurate acoustic map that allows a child to rapidly and automatically process phonemes in an incoming language stream

THE ACCURACY OF A CHILD’S ACOUSTIC MAP IS A VITAL COMPONENT OF THEIR ABILITY TO DECODE, AND ACQUIRE AND USE LANGUAGE

How Acoustic Map Development Can Be Supported

Environmental inputs drive acoustic map formation, but not all inputs are created equal

• Extensive research suggests that infants in suboptimal sound environments, such as high noise settings or ones lacking natural environmental variation, can have disrupted acoustic mapping because of insufficient exposure to the auditory cues the brain is expecting
• Disrupted mapping slows and potentially impairs later language development and processing

The sleep dilemma 

• During sleep, certain brain areas are still actively listening for audio cues that generate plasticity and drive the formation of the acoustic map
• Not all infant sleep environments provide those critical stimuli – including those created by many traditional sound machines that can help sleep by masking noise but, as is the case with white noise machines, lack the auditory cues that promote language development​

The Smarter Sleep solution

Recognizing the benefits of providing salient acoustic cues to language development during sleep, Smarter Sleep was developed to provide an enriched auditory environment that supports both sleep and language development.

Each of its soundtracks:

• Promotes alpha waves that induce sleep as well as delta waves that encourage deep sleep, and
• Includes structured auditory cues that keep brain areas that should be active during sleep engaged in the development of the neuronal connections so fundamental to efficient language processing​

To learn more, download our white paper

The Science

RAPT AABy and RAPT are based on the work of Dr. April Benasich and were developed in recognition of the foundational importance of rapid auditory processing to language acquisition and cognitive outcomes. RAPT’s design and impact have been validated in numerous peer-reviewed studies.

SUMMARY:

The early ability to discriminate brief, successive acoustic cues through rapid auditory processing (RAP) is one of the core capabilities of the developing brain. In fact, Dr. Benasich’s research has shown that an infant’s RAP ability at six months is highly predictive of scores on language and cognitive performance tests at three and four years old – which themselves have been shown to be strongly associated with lifelong cognitive outcomes. In contrast, infants with weaker RAP skills form poor acoustic maps and can have difficulty learning to read because their brains have trouble matching the appropriate sound to a specific letter. Even as infants mature, and through all stages of adulthood, RAP remains a key cognitive ability, continually supporting the brain’s efforts to maintain strong neuronal connections in its acoustic map so that it can be an effective language processor. 

Understanding the immense plasticity of the young brain, Dr. Benasich embarked on a decades long effort to create an interactive audio-visual training algorithm that would optimize RAP by exposing infants to temporally changing acoustic stimuli. The resulting patented technology, RAPT, has been evaluated in numerous peer-reviewed clinical studies, demonstrating, among other findings, that the auditory processing skills of babies exposed to RAPT just once a week for 6 weeks significantly increased their auditory processing speed (these infants were twice as fast as untrained infants). RAPT-trained babies were also faster at syllable recognition and improved their allocation of attention. All of these infant skills have been shown to be significantly related to later language and reading performance.