An infant’s early contact with music affects its future development in a broad sense, including the development of musical aptitude. Contact with the mother’s voice, both prenatally and after birth, is also extremely important for creating an emotional bond between the infant and the mother. This article discusses the role that auditory experience—both typically musical and that associated with the mother’s voice—plays in fetal, neonatal, and infant development, particularly in terms of musical aptitude. Attempts have also been made to elucidate the neuropsychological mechanisms underlying the positive effects that appropriate musical stimulation can have on a child’s development.

Background: Preterm birth contributes to adverse mental health outcomes of parents dealing with a premature neonate. The main objec-tive of this study is to determine whether music therapy (MT) songwriting during the infants’ stay in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) is superior to standard care in reducing the risk of postpartum depression in high-risk parents of preterm children throughout the hospital treatment. The secondary objectives include assessment of effectiveness of MT in other aspects of mental health (anxiety level, perceived stress, mental wellbeing, coping, resilience). Furthermore, this trial will evaluate the medical and social factors that may be associated with the effects of MT songwriting.Participants and procedure: The study design is a sequential mixed method study with a dominant status QUAN to qual. The quantitative trial was designed as a parallel, multicenter, pragmatic, randomized controlled trial. The qualitative study is a descriptive phenomeno-logical study that seeks to understand the lived experiences of participants exposed to songwriting. Participants are parents of premature infants hospitalized in NICU (106 families) in 5 hospitals, in Colombia and Poland. Intervention: 3 MT song-writing sessions per week across 3 weeks. Primary outcome: the risk of postnatal depression; secondary outcomes: anxiety level, mental wellbeing, resilience, stress, coping.Results: The results will be analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively.Conclusions: This study will provide a report on the effectiveness of MT songwriting on mental health in at-risk parents of preterm infants.