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Since maturational processes triggering increased attunement to native language features in early infancy are sensitive to dietary factors, infant-diet related differences in brain processing of native-language speech stimuli might indicate variations in the onset of this tuning process. We measured cortical responses (ERPs) to syllables in 4 and 5 month old infants fed breast milk, milk formula, or soy formula and found syllable discrimination (P350) and syntactic-related functions (P600) but not syllable perception (P170) varied by diet, but not gender or background measures. The results suggest breastfed and formula-fed infants differ in onset of this critical period in speech perception.