title: Smoking During Pregnancy Affects Newborn's Speech Processing Ability

According to researchers at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, prenatal exposure to tobacco smoke in otherwise healthy babies is linked with significant changes in brain physiology associated with basic perceptual skills that could place the infant at risk for later developmental problems. Specifically, while the infants of nonsmokers discriminated among a greater number of syllables, the newborns of smokers began the discrimination process later and differentiated among fewer syllables.


Source: Environmental Health Perspectives

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