Baby Cry Analyzer Tool May Help Identify Health Issues

A crying baby is generally thought to mean hunger, sleepiness or a please-change-my-dirty-diaper request. But now researchers at Brown University say a baby's cry could be a "window into the brain" of a child, unveiling developmental disorders or neurological issues.

Researchers from Brown University and the Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island created a computer-based tool that can analyze the acoustics of crying, the university said in a news release. Using recorded babies' cries, the tool breaks a recording into 12.5-millisecond frames, analyzing each frame for things like volume, voicing and frequency characteristics. After further processing of the utterances, doctors then have 80 different parameters, which could help shed light on a baby's health.