Quiet hospitals are better for premature babies.

That’s the consensus of a study published by Swiss researchers, who found that a loud and noisy hospital environment can affect how sensory skills develop in premature infants.

Babies born two months short of full term are at high risk of developing learning disabilities and sensory disorders in childhood. Often, the transition from the mother’s womb to the beeps and voices of a hospital room can be shocking.

The study was published in the journal Science Reports and conducted by University of Geneva researchers in collaboration with the French National Center for Scientific Research. It found that loud noises, such as feed pump alarms in the hospital room, disturb the infants’ ability to distinguish and remember objects using their tactile skills, or sense of touch.

During the study, 63 babies were randomly separated into two groups. One group was placed in a silent and serene environment, and the other in a noisy location. All the babies were given prism-shaped objects to handle. Each time a baby dropped the object, researchers would quickly pick it up and put it in the infant’s hands again. As the experiment progressed, the babies in the quiet environment gradually lost interest in the object, meaning they had gained familiarity with it.

But the babies in the noisy room didn’t appear to lose interest. Instead, it took them longer to become familiar with the objects because the noises kept disrupting them.

Researchers said their work sheds light on the need to reduce noise around premature infants because it’s a critical time for developing neurological and sensory skills.