Search results for "Speech sounds"

Passive exposure to speech sounds modifies change detection brain responses in adults

2019

In early life auditory discrimination ability can be enhanced by passive sound exposure. In contrast, in adulthood passive exposure seems to be insufficient to promote discrimination ability, but this has been tested only with a single short exposure session in humans. We tested whether passive exposure to unfamiliar auditory stimuli can result in enhanced cortical discrimination ability and change detection in adult humans, and whether the possible learning effect generalizes to different stimuli. To address these issues, we exposed adult Finnish participants to Chinese lexical tones passively for 2 h per day on 4 consecutive days. Behavioral responses and the brain's event-related potenti…

Linguistic relevance of duration within the native language determines the accuracy of speech-sound duration processing.

2003

As indexed by electrophysiological measures, in native speakers of a language with linguistically significant opposition between short and long phonemes, the pre-attentive detection accuracy of duration changes in speech sounds was tuned in comparison with that in non-speech sounds. This was not observed in advanced second-language users of the same language, suggesting that second-language acquisition does not lead to speech-specific tuning of the duration processing as does native language acquisition in early childhood.

Auditory event-related potentials measured in kindergarten predict later reading problems at school age.

2013

Identifying children at risk for reading problems or dyslexia at kindergarten age could improve support for beginning readers. Brain event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured for temporally complex pseudowords and corresponding non-speech stimuli from 6.5-year-old children who participated in behavioral literacy tests again at 9 years in the second grade. Children who had reading problems at school age had larger N250 responses to speech and non-speech stimuli particularly at the left hemisphere. The brain responses also correlated with reading skills. The results suggest that atypical auditory and speech processing are a neural-level risk factor for future reading problems. [Supplement…

Responsivity to dyslexia training indexed by the N170 amplitude of the brain potential elicited by word reading.

2016

The present study examined training effects in dyslexic children on reading fluency and the amplitude of N170, a negative brain-potential component elicited by letter and symbol strings. A group of 18 children with dyslexia in 3rd grade (9.05 ± 0.46 years old) was tested before and after following a letter-speech sound mapping training. A group of 20 third-grade typical readers (8.78 ± 0.35 years old) performed a single time on the same brain potential task. The training was differentially effective in speeding up reading fluency in the dyslexic children. In some children, training had a beneficial effect on reading fluency (‘improvers’) while a training effect was absent in others (‘non-im…

Auditory‐evoked potentials to changes in sound duration in urethane‐anaesthetized mice

2019

Spectrotemporally complex sounds carry important information for acoustic communication. Among the important features of these sounds is the temporal duration. An event-related potential called mismatch negativity indexes auditory change detection in humans. An analogous response (mismatch response) has been found to duration changes in speech sounds in rats but not yet in mice. We addressed whether mice show this response, and, if elicited, whether this response is functionally analogous to mismatch negativity or whether adaptation-based models suffice to explain them. Auditory-evoked potentials were epidurally recorded above the mice auditory cortex. The differential response to the chang…

Mismatch brain response to speech sound changes in rats

2011

Understanding speech is based on neural representations of individual speech sounds. In humans, such representations are capable of supporting an automatic and memory-based mechanism for auditory change detection, as reflected by the mismatch negativity of event-related potentials. There are also findings of neural representations of speech sounds in animals, but it is not known whether these representations can support the change detection mechanism analogous to that underlying the mismatch negativity in humans. To this end, we presented synthesized spoken syllables to urethane-anesthetized rats while local field potentials were epidurally recorded above their primary auditory cortex. In a…

Auditory perceptual learning : evidence from electrophysiological recordings in rodents and humans

2018

Yllättävät muutokset äänimaailmassa viestittävät yleensä selviytymisen kannalta tärkeistä vihjeistä, joten niiden nopea ja automaattinen havaitseminen on tärkeää. Tietoinen harjoittelu mahdollistaa havainto-oppimisen ja oppimisen seurauksena hermostoon muodostuu uusia muistijälkiä. Varhaisessa kehityksessä herkkyyskauden aikana muistijälkien muodostuminen, ihmisellä erityisesti puheäänille, on automaattista, eikä siihen vaadita tietoista harjoittelua. Toisaalta perinteisesti on ajateltu, että herkkyyskauden jälkeen vain aktiivinen harjoittelu johtaa uusien muistijälkien muodostumiseen. Muutoksen havaitsemisen hermostollista perustaa voidaan tutkia mittaamalla aivojen sähköisiä jännitevastei…

Separating mismatch negativity (MMN) from obligatory brain responses for speech and non-speech sounds in school-aged children

2010

Auditory Training in Deaf Children

2010

Deaf children are, earlier than in the past, identified and can benefit of new and highperformance devices (as cochlear implants or digital hearing aids). However, a great variability in their spoken language skills is observed (12) and first attributable to the well-known effect of the age of auditory rehabilitation (15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22). The second assessment concerns the way speech disorders are treated: new technologies are not linked to any change in the way speech therapy is delivered, particularly in the field of auditory training. Auditory training constitutes an important part of the speech therapy addressed to the deaf children and must start as soon as possible. The go…

Auditory evoked potentials to changes in speech sound duration in anesthetized mice

2018

AbstractElectrophysiological response termed mismatch negativity (MMN) indexes auditory change detection in humans. An analogous response, called the mismatch response (MMR), is also elicited in animals. Mismatch response has been widely utilized in investigations of change detection in human speech sounds in rats and guinea pigs, but not in mice. Since e.g. transgenic mouse models provide important advantages for further studies, we studied processing of speech sounds in anesthetized mice. Auditory evoked potentials were recorded from the dura above the auditory cortex to changes in duration of a human speech sound /a/. In oddball stimulus condition, the MMR was elicited at 53-259 ms laten…