Parents may sometimes wish they could interpret their babies’ cries, and now researchers may have found a way to do this.

A team from Brown University and the Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island developed a device that analyzes a baby’s cry as a means to interpret possible health or developmental problems.

The computer-based instrument may allow researchers and doctors to make use of cries as a way to determine whether a child has neurological or developmental problems.

The Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research recently published a paper describing the device and its testing methods.

According to a release from Brown University, the analyzer works in two steps:

  • It separates recorded cries from babies into frames of 12.5 milliseconds. Each of these frames is then studied for things like frequency traits, voicing and volume.
  • The frames then go back together, and this time they are categorized as either an utterance or a silence (the pause between each utterance). The utterances are then grouped according to their length and analyzed for variables such as pitch. In addition, the lengths of the silences are measured.

In total, 80 different metrics are used to find clues about the health of a baby.

Stephen Sheinkopf, an assistant professor at Brown who helped develop the device, says:

“There are lots of conditions that might manifest in differences in cry acoustics. For instance, babies with birth trauma or brain injury as a result of complications in pregnancy, or birth of babies who are extremely premature can have ongoing medical effects.

Cry analysis can be a noninvasive way to get a measurement of these disruptions in the neurobiological and neurobehavioral systems in very young babies.”

Barry Lester, director of Brown’s Center for the Study of Children at Risk, has been working with Sheinkopf and others on this project as an expert in baby cries. He notes that this kind of research dates back to the 1960s, with a disorder known as Cri du chat – cry of the cat – syndrome.

Like Down syndrome, Cri du chat is a result of a genetic anomaly and is characterized by a recognizably high-pitched cry. Although the cries are perceivable by the human ear, Lester says the cries associated with that syndrome led him to wonder if there were other, smaller differences in a baby’s cry that could be indicative of health.

He refers to a baby’s cry as “a window into the brain.”

Since the tests outlined in the team’s paper show an accuracy rating of 88% to 95% for detecting voicing characteristics in the samples, the team is optimistic that their new device will be able to accurately identify problems in babies from a very early stage.

Lester adds: “Early detection of developmental disorders is critical. It can lead to insights into the causes of these disorders and interventions to prevent or reduce the severity of impairment.”

In addition to aiding doctors, the team believes their device can further the research being done on “infant cry development.”

Recently, a Smart Diaper was created that can communicate urine data to parents’ phones, in yet another way scientists are attempting to glean health information from babies.