Cry data

Updated on: Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Kolkata: Infants actually start communicating right after birth, say experts from SSKM Hospital’s neo-natal wing and IIT-Kharagpur who are embarking on a ground-breaking study to decipher how infants communicate.

Babies try to convey their emotions and spell out different moods, they say. It’s just that we do not understand their lingo. The study on the cries of babies will de-mystify and interpret them, decoding the language behind the apparently meaningless sounds that infants emit. This will help in a baby’s treatment and ease the anxiety of parents who, most of the time, have no clue if an infant is crying because of an earache or because he is hungry.

More than 10,000 different baby cries and movements have already been recorded as part of the project, a joint venture project of SSKM Hospital’s neo-natal wing and IIT-Kgp. The two-yearlong study is being funded by the Government of India’s ministry of information and technology.

The ‘cry data’ will be analyzed to decipher the patterns, which will then be compiled into a sort of dictionary — a ready handbook for parents. IIT researchers are also devising a software that will identify for doctors what a bawling child is trying to say about her pain/discomfort. This will help cut down diagnosis time.

“It’s very interesting. Newborns do communicate but no one has ever tried to decode what they are trying to convey. The coming together of doctors and technical people was very essential for this kind of a study. That is why we have tied up with IIT-Kharagpur,” said Dr Arun Singh, head of SSKM’s neo-natal department.

The outcome of the study is expected to benefit both parents and doctors in dealing with newborns. Though launched officially a month ago, doctors at SSKM have been studying the cries of newborns for about a year now.

Along with the study on cries, the project will have two more aspects — studying different movements of the baby to evaluate their neurological development and examine the neonatal brain.

“Those who are born with neurological complications often suffer violent seizures. Now, if we record the baby’s movements it could be possible to predict a seizure and ensure quick medical intervention. The software will record the warning signals and alert the medical staff in case there’s an alteration in the neurological state or the heart movements. We are going to focus on ailing infants who need to be under constant surveillance at the intensive care unit,” said A K Majumdar, principal investigator of the project at IIT Kharagpur along with Jayanta Mukhopadhyay. Early detection of neurological disorders could help save lives through preventive treatment, said Singh.

The study of the neo-natal brain function is usually done with the help of an amplified EEG machine. Just two hospitals in India that have the facility and the cost is exorbitant. IIT’s device will replicate the amplified EEG at a much lesser cost.

According to researchers, the software will merely be an aid for the doctors and nurses. “The idea is not mechanize treatment but to improve the patient care system and minimize errors,” said Majumdar.

Cry data

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