Abstract
Recent advancements in histological, anatomical, and neuroimaging studies of the infant brain in the perinatal and postnatal periods help us tackle the critical question of how infants acquire their native language. In this review, I will focus on the course of brain development and its relation to speech perception during the first year of life. The maturation of the temporal cortex, including the auditory areas as well as long-distance fibers, which connect the fronto-temporal regions, underlie the acquisition of spoken language. Multi-channel near-infrared spectroscopy can shed light on the initial formation of language networks in the developing brain.
