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Tang L, Xu Y, Yang S, Meng X, Du B, Sun C, Liu L, Dong Q, Nan Y. Mandarin-Speaking Amusics' Online Recognition of Tone and Intonation. JOURNAL OF SPEECH, LANGUAGE, AND HEARING RESEARCH : JSLHR 2024; 67:1107-1116. [PMID: 38470842 DOI: 10.1044/2024_jslhr-23-00520] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 03/14/2024]
Abstract
PURPOSE Congenital amusia is a neurogenetic disorder of musical pitch processing. Its linguistic consequences have been examined separately for speech intonations and lexical tones. However, in a tonal language such as Chinese, the processing of intonations and lexical tones interacts with each other during online speech perception. Whether and how the musical pitch disorder might affect linguistic pitch processing during online speech perception remains unknown. METHOD We investigated this question with intonation (question vs. statement) and lexical tone (rising Tone 2 vs. falling Tone 4) identification tasks using the same set of sentences, comparing behavioral and event-related potential measurements between Mandarin-speaking amusics and matched controls. We specifically focused on the amusics without behavioral lexical tone deficits (the majority, i.e., pure amusics). RESULTS Results showed that, despite relative to normal performance when tested in word lexical tone test, pure amusics demonstrated inferior recognition than controls during sentence tone and intonation identification. Compared to controls, pure amusics had larger N400 amplitudes in question stimuli during tone task and smaller P600 amplitudes in intonation task. CONCLUSION These data indicate that musical pitch disorder affects both tone and intonation processing during sentence processing even for pure amusics, whose lexical tone processing was intact when tested with words.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lirong Tang
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, China
| | - Yangxiaoxue Xu
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, China
| | - Shiting Yang
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, China
| | - Xiangyun Meng
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, China
| | - Boqi Du
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, China
| | - Chen Sun
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, China
| | - Li Liu
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, China
| | - Qi Dong
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, China
| | - Yun Nan
- State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Beijing Normal University, China
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Luo Q, Gao L, Yang Z, Chen S, Yang J, Lu S. Integrated sentence-level speech perception evokes strengthened language networks and facilitates early speech development. Neuroimage 2024; 289:120544. [PMID: 38365164 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2024.120544] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/16/2023] [Revised: 12/23/2023] [Accepted: 02/14/2024] [Indexed: 02/18/2024] Open
Abstract
Natural poetic speeches (i.e., proverbs, nursery rhymes, and commercial ads) with strong prosodic regularities are easily memorized by children and the harmonious acoustic patterns are suggested to facilitate their integrated sentence processing. Do children have specific neural pathways for perceiving such poetic utterances, and does their speech development benefit from it? We recorded the task-induced hemodynamic changes of 94 children aged 2 to 12 years using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) while they listened to poetic and non-poetic natural sentences. Seventy-three adult as controls were recruited to investigate the developmental specificity of children group. The results indicated that poetic sentences perceiving is a highly integrated process featured by a lower brain workload in both groups. However, an early activated large-scale network was induced only in the child group, coordinated by hubs for connectivity diversity. Additionally, poetic speeches evoked activation in the phonological encoding regions in the children's group rather than adult controls which decreases with children's ages. The neural responses to poetic speeches were positively linked to children's speech communication performance, especially the fluency and semantic aspects. These results reveal children's neural sensitivity to integrated speech perception which facilitate early speech development by strengthening more sophisticated language networks and the perception-production circuit.
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Affiliation(s)
- Qinqin Luo
- Neurolinguistics Laboratory,College of International Studies, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China; Department of Chinese Language and Literature, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong
| | - Leyan Gao
- Neurolinguistics Laboratory,College of International Studies, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China
| | - Zhirui Yang
- Neurolinguistics Laboratory,College of International Studies, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China; Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong
| | - Sihui Chen
- Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
| | - Jingwen Yang
- Neurolinguistics Laboratory,College of International Studies, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China
| | - Shuo Lu
- Neurolinguistics Laboratory,College of International Studies, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China; Department of Clinical Neurolinguistics Research, Mental and Neurological Diseases Research Center, The Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China.
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Alotaibi S, Alsaleh A, Wuerger S, Meyer G. Rapid neural changes during novel speech-sound learning: An fMRI and DTI study. BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 2023; 245:105324. [PMID: 37741162 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2023.105324] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/20/2022] [Revised: 09/05/2023] [Accepted: 09/12/2023] [Indexed: 09/25/2023]
Abstract
While the functional and microstructural changes that occur when we learn new language skills are well documented, relatively little is known about the time course of these changes. Here a combined functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) study that tracks neural change over three days of learning Arabic phonetic categorization as a new language (L-training) is presented. Twenty adult native English-speaking (L-native) participants are scanned before and after training to perceive and produce L-training phonetic contrasts for one hour on three consecutive days. A third (Chinese) language is used as a control language (L-control). Behavioral results show significant performance improvement for L-training in both learnt tasks; the perception and production task. Imaging analysis reveals that, training-related hemodynamic fMRI signal and fractional anisotropy (FA) value increasing can be observed, in the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and positively correlated with behavioral improvement. Moreover, post training functional connectivity findings show a significant increasing between LIFG and left inferior parietal lobule for L-training. These results indicate that three hours of phonetic categorization learning causes functional and microstructural changes that are typically associated with much more long-term learning.
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Affiliation(s)
- Sahal Alotaibi
- Radiology Dept, Applied Medical Sciences, Taif University, Taif 21944, Saudi Arabia; Faculty of Health & Life Sciences, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7ZA, United Kingdom
| | - Alanood Alsaleh
- Radiological Sciences Dept, Applied Medical Sciences, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
| | - Sophie Wuerger
- Clinical and Cognitive Neuroscience Group, Dept of Psychology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7ZA, United Kingdom
| | - Georg Meyer
- Clinical and Cognitive Neuroscience Group, Dept of Psychology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7ZA, United Kingdom; Virtual Engineering Centre, Digital Innovation Facility, University of Liverpool, L69 3RF, United Kingdom.
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Tee BL, Deleon J, Chen Li Ying LK, Miller BL, Y Lo R, Europa E, Sudarsan S, Grasso S, Gorno-Tempini ML. Tonal and orthographic analysis in a Cantonese-speaking individual with nonfluent/agrammatic variant primary progressive aphasia. Neurocase 2022; 28:1-10. [PMID: 34404317 PMCID: PMC9345301 DOI: 10.1080/13554794.2021.1925302] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/20/2022]
Abstract
Clinical understanding of primary progressive aphasia (PPA) has been established based on English-speaking population. The lack of linguistic diversity in research hinders the diagnosis of PPA in non-English speaking patients. This case report describes the tonal and orthographic deficits of a multilingual native Cantonese-speaking woman with nonfluent/agrammatic variant PPA (nfvPPA) and progressive supranuclear palsy. Our findings suggest that Cantonese-speaking nfvPPA patients exhibit tone production impairments, tone perception deficits at the lexical selection processing, and linguistic dysgraphia errors unique to logographic script writer. These findings suggest that linguistic tailored approaches offer novel and effective tools in identifying non-English speaking PPA individuals.
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Affiliation(s)
- Boon Lead Tee
- Memory and Aging Center, University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States.,Department of Neurology, Dyslexia Center, University of California, San Francisco, CA, United States.,Global Brain Health Institute, University of California, San Francisco, USA.,Department of Neurology, Buddhist Tzu Chi General Hospital and Tzu Chi University, Hualien, Taiwan
| | - Jessica Deleon
- Memory and Aging Center, University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States.,Department of Neurology, Dyslexia Center, University of California, San Francisco, CA, United States
| | - Lorinda Kwan Chen Li Ying
- Department of Special Education and Counselling, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
| | - Bruce L Miller
- Memory and Aging Center, University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States
| | - Raymond Y Lo
- Department of Neurology, Buddhist Tzu Chi General Hospital and Tzu Chi University, Hualien, Taiwan
| | - Eduardo Europa
- Memory and Aging Center, University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States.,The Aphasia Research and Treatment Lab, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, The University of Texas, Austin, United States
| | - Swati Sudarsan
- Memory and Aging Center, University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States.,Department of Neurology, Dyslexia Center, University of California, San Francisco, CA, United States
| | - Stephanie Grasso
- The Aphasia Research and Treatment Lab, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, The University of Texas, Austin, United States
| | - Maria Luisa Gorno-Tempini
- Memory and Aging Center, University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, United States.,Department of Neurology, Dyslexia Center, University of California, San Francisco, CA, United States
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Si X, Li S, Xiang S, Yu J, Ming D. Imagined speech increases the hemodynamic response and functional connectivity of the dorsal motor cortex. J Neural Eng 2021; 18. [PMID: 34507311 DOI: 10.1088/1741-2552/ac25d9] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/17/2021] [Accepted: 09/10/2021] [Indexed: 11/12/2022]
Abstract
Objective. Decoding imagined speech from brain signals could provide a more natural, user-friendly way for developing the next generation of the brain-computer interface (BCI). With the advantages of non-invasive, portable, relatively high spatial resolution and insensitivity to motion artifacts, the functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) shows great potential for developing the non-invasive speech BCI. However, there is a lack of fNIRS evidence in uncovering the neural mechanism of imagined speech. Our goal is to investigate the specific brain regions and the corresponding cortico-cortical functional connectivity features during imagined speech with fNIRS.Approach. fNIRS signals were recorded from 13 subjects' bilateral motor and prefrontal cortex during overtly and covertly repeating words. Cortical activation was determined through the mean oxygen-hemoglobin concentration changes, and functional connectivity was calculated by Pearson's correlation coefficient.Main results. (a) The bilateral dorsal motor cortex was significantly activated during the covert speech, whereas the bilateral ventral motor cortex was significantly activated during the overt speech. (b) As a subregion of the motor cortex, sensorimotor cortex (SMC) showed a dominant dorsal response to covert speech condition, whereas a dominant ventral response to overt speech condition. (c) Broca's area was deactivated during the covert speech but activated during the overt speech. (d) Compared to overt speech, dorsal SMC(dSMC)-related functional connections were enhanced during the covert speech.Significance. We provide fNIRS evidence for the involvement of dSMC in speech imagery. dSMC is the speech imagery network's key hub and is probably involved in the sensorimotor information processing during the covert speech. This study could inspire the BCI community to focus on the potential contribution of dSMC during speech imagery.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xiaopeng Si
- Academy of Medical Engineering and Translational Medicine, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China.,Tianjin Key Laboratory of Brain Science and Neural Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China.,Tianjin International Engineering Institute, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China.,Institute of Applied Psychology, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300350, People's Republic of China
| | - Sicheng Li
- Academy of Medical Engineering and Translational Medicine, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China.,Tianjin Key Laboratory of Brain Science and Neural Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China
| | - Shaoxin Xiang
- Tianjin Key Laboratory of Brain Science and Neural Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China.,Tianjin International Engineering Institute, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China
| | - Jiayue Yu
- Tianjin Key Laboratory of Brain Science and Neural Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China.,Tianjin International Engineering Institute, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China
| | - Dong Ming
- Academy of Medical Engineering and Translational Medicine, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China.,Tianjin Key Laboratory of Brain Science and Neural Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, People's Republic of China
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Chien PJ, Friederici AD, Hartwigsen G, Sammler D. Intonation processing increases task-specific fronto-temporal connectivity in tonal language speakers. Hum Brain Mapp 2020; 42:161-174. [PMID: 32996647 PMCID: PMC7721241 DOI: 10.1002/hbm.25214] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/16/2020] [Revised: 09/08/2020] [Accepted: 09/13/2020] [Indexed: 01/08/2023] Open
Abstract
Language comprehension depends on tight functional interactions between distributed brain regions. While these interactions are established for semantic and syntactic processes, the functional network of speech intonation – the linguistic variation of pitch – has been scarcely defined. Particularly little is known about intonation in tonal languages, in which pitch not only serves intonation but also expresses meaning via lexical tones. The present study used psychophysiological interaction analyses of functional magnetic resonance imaging data to characterise the neural networks underlying intonation and tone processing in native Mandarin Chinese speakers. Participants categorised either intonation or tone of monosyllabic Mandarin words that gradually varied between statement and question and between Tone 2 and Tone 4. Intonation processing induced bilateral fronto‐temporal activity and increased functional connectivity between left inferior frontal gyrus and bilateral temporal regions, likely linking auditory perception and labelling of intonation categories in a phonological network. Tone processing induced bilateral temporal activity, associated with the auditory representation of tonal (phonemic) categories. Together, the present data demonstrate the breadth of the functional intonation network in a tonal language including higher‐level phonological processes in addition to auditory representations common to both intonation and tone.
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Affiliation(s)
- Pei-Ju Chien
- International Max Planck Research School NeuroCom, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.,Otto Hahn Group 'Neural Bases of Intonation in Speech and Music', Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.,Lise Meitner Research Group 'Cognition and Plasticity', Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.,Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Angela D Friederici
- Department of Neuropsychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Gesa Hartwigsen
- Lise Meitner Research Group 'Cognition and Plasticity', Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Daniela Sammler
- Otto Hahn Group 'Neural Bases of Intonation in Speech and Music', Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany
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