The development of phonological perception in early childhood is crucial to language acquisition. During the first year of life, infants undergo a phenomenon of perceptual narrowing, during which their sensitivity to non-native contrasts diminishes as they gradually adapt to the phonological properties of their mother tongue (Kuhl et al., 2006; Maurer & Werker, 2014). Moderate to late preterm infants (32-36 weeks' gestational age) have protracted neurodevelopmental outcomes at age 2 (De Jong et al., 2015; Shah et al., 2016) and an increased risk of low academic outcomes at age 5 (Quigley et al., 2012). The aim of this study is (i) to explore the role of cortical and subcortical brain structures in encoding native contrasts during early development, (ii) to determine the impact of moderate prematurity.