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Shao J, Zhang C, Zhang G, Zhang Y, Pattamadilok C. The effects of alphabetic literacy, linguistic-processing demand and tone type on the dichotic listening of lexical tones. Front Psychol 2022; 13:877684. [PMID: 35959041 PMCID: PMC9360803 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.877684] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/17/2022] [Accepted: 06/28/2022] [Indexed: 11/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Brain lateralization of lexical tone processing remains a matter of debate. In this study we used a dichotic listening paradigm to examine the influences of the knowledge of Jyutping (a romanization writing system which provides explicit Cantonese tone markers), linguistic-processing demand and tone type on the ear preference pattern of native tone processing in Hong Kong Cantonese speakers. While participants with little knowledge of Jyutping showed a previously reported left-ear advantage (LEA), those with a good level of Jyutping expertise exhibited either a right-ear advantage or bilateral processing during lexical tone identification and contour tone discrimination, respectively. As for the effect of linguistic-processing demand, while an LEA was found in acoustic/phonetic perception situations, this advantage disappeared and was replaced by a bilateral pattern in conditions that involved a greater extent of linguistic processing, suggesting an increased involvement of the left hemisphere. Regarding the effect of tone type, both groups showed an LEA in level tone discrimination, but only the Jyutping group demonstrated a bilateral pattern in contour tone discrimination. Overall, knowledge of written codes of tones, greater degree of linguistic processing and contour tone processing seem to influence the brain lateralization of lexical tone processing in native listeners of Cantonese by increasing the recruitment of the left-hemisphere language network.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jing Shao
- Department of English Language and Literature, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong SAR, China
- Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China
| | - Caicai Zhang
- Research Centre for Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience, Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong SAR, China
- *Correspondence: Caicai Zhang,
| | - Gaoyuan Zhang
- Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Peking University, Beijing, China
| | - Yubin Zhang
- Department of Linguistics, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, United States
| | - Chotiga Pattamadilok
- Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS, LPL, Laboratoire Parole et Langage, Aix-en-Provence, France
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2
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Reverberation Degrades Pitch Perception but Not Mandarin Tone and Vowel Recognition of Cochlear Implant Users. Ear Hear 2021; 43:1139-1150. [PMID: 34799495 DOI: 10.1097/aud.0000000000001173] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
Abstract
OBJECTIVES The primary goal of this study was to investigate the effects of reverberation on Mandarin tone and vowel recognition of cochlear implant (CI) users and normal-hearing (NH) listeners. To understand the performance of Mandarin tone recognition, this study also measured participants' pitch perception and the availability of temporal envelope cues in reverberation. DESIGN Fifteen CI users and nine NH listeners, all Mandarin speakers, were asked to recognize Mandarin single-vowels produced in four lexical tones and rank harmonic complex tones in pitch with different reverberation times (RTs) from 0 to 1 second. Virtual acoustic techniques were used to simulate rooms with different degrees of reverberation. Vowel duration and correlation between amplitude envelope and fundamental frequency (F0) contour were analyzed for different tones as a function of the RT. RESULTS Vowel durations of different tones significantly increased with longer RTs. Amplitude-F0 correlation remained similar for the falling Tone 4 but greatly decreased for the other tones in reverberation. NH listeners had robust pitch-ranking, tone recognition, and vowel recognition performance as the RT increased. Reverberation significantly degraded CI users' pitch-ranking thresholds but did not significantly affect the overall scores of tone and vowel recognition with CIs. Detailed analyses of tone confusion matrices showed that CI users reduced the flat Tone-1 responses but increased the falling Tone-4 responses in reverberation, possibly due to the falling amplitude envelope of late reflections after the original vowel segment. CI users' tone recognition scores were not correlated with their pitch-ranking thresholds. CONCLUSIONS NH listeners can reliably recognize Mandarin tones in reverberation using salient pitch cues from spectral and temporal fine structures. However, CI users have poorer pitch perception using F0-related amplitude modulations that are reduced in reverberation. Reverberation distorts speech amplitude envelopes, which affect the distribution of tone responses but not the accuracy of tone recognition with CIs. Recognition of vowels with stationary formant trajectories is not affected by reverberation for both NH listeners and CI users, regardless of the available spectral resolution. Future studies should test how the relatively stable vowel and tone recognition may contribute to sentence recognition in reverberation of Mandarin-speaking CI users.
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Tanaka K, Ross B, Kuriki S, Harashima T, Obuchi C, Okamoto H. Neurophysiological Evaluation of Right-Ear Advantage During Dichotic Listening. Front Psychol 2021; 12:696263. [PMID: 34305754 PMCID: PMC8295541 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.696263] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/16/2021] [Accepted: 06/14/2021] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Right-ear advantage refers to the observation that when two different speech stimuli are simultaneously presented to both ears, listeners report stimuli more correctly from the right ear than the left. It is assumed to result from prominent projection along the auditory pathways to the contralateral hemisphere and the dominance of the left auditory cortex for the perception of speech elements. Our study aimed to investigate the role of attention in the right-ear advantage. We recorded magnetoencephalography data while participants listened to pairs of Japanese two-syllable words (namely, "/ta/ /ko/" or "/i/ /ka/"). The amplitudes of the stimuli were modulated at 35 Hz in one ear and 45 Hz in the other. Such frequency-tagging allowed the selective quantification of left and right auditory cortex responses to left and right ear stimuli. Behavioral tests confirmed the right-ear advantage, with higher accuracy for stimuli presented to the right ear than to the left. The amplitude of the auditory steady-state response was larger when attending to the stimuli compared to passive listening. We detected a correlation between the attention-related increase in the amplitude of the auditory steady-state response and the laterality index of behavioral accuracy. The right-ear advantage in the free-response dichotic listening was also found in neural activities in the left auditory cortex, suggesting that it was related to the allocation of attention to both ears.
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Affiliation(s)
- Keita Tanaka
- Department of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Denki University, Saitama, Japan
| | - Bernhard Ross
- Baycrest Centre, Rotman Research Institute, Toronto, ON, Canada
| | - Shinya Kuriki
- Department of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Denki University, Saitama, Japan.,Faculty of Health Sciences, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan
| | - Tsuneo Harashima
- Faculty of Human Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan
| | - Chie Obuchi
- Department of Speech Language and Hearing Sciences, International University of Health and Welfare, Narita, Japan
| | - Hidehiko Okamoto
- Department of Physiology, School of Medicine, International University of Health and Welfare, Narita, Japan
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4
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Zhang H, Lu X, Bi Y, Hu L. A modality selective effect of functional laterality in pain detection sensitivity. Sci Rep 2021; 11:6883. [PMID: 33767243 PMCID: PMC7994376 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-85111-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/23/2020] [Accepted: 02/24/2021] [Indexed: 12/30/2022] Open
Abstract
The ability to detect environmental changes is essential to determine the appropriate reaction when facing potential threats. Both detection and reaction functions are critical to survival, and the superior performance of motor reaction for the dominant hand is well recognized in humans. However, it is not clear whether there exists laterality in sensitivity to detect external changes and whether the possible laterality is associated with sensory modality and stimulus intensity. Here, we tested whether the perceptual sensitivity and electrophysiological responses elicited by graded sensory stimuli (i.e., nociceptive somatosensory, non-nociceptive somatosensory, auditory, and visual) that were delivered on/near the left and right hands would be different for right-handed individuals. We observed that perceived intensities and most brain responses were significantly larger when nociceptive stimuli were delivered to the left side (i.e., the non-dominant hand) than to the right side (i.e., the dominant hand). No significant difference was observed between the two sides for other modalities. The higher sensitivity to detect nociceptive stimuli for the non-dominant hand would be important to provide a prompt reaction to noxious events, thus compensating for its worse motor performance. This laterality phenomenon should be considered when designing experiments for pain laboratory studies and evaluating regional sensory abnormalities for pain patients.
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Affiliation(s)
- Huijuan Zhang
- CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.,Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China
| | - Xuejing Lu
- CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China. .,Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.
| | - Yanzhi Bi
- CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.,Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China
| | - Li Hu
- CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China. .,Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.
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Wang XD, Xu H, Yuan Z, Luo H, Wang M, Li HW, Chen L. Brain Hemispheres Swap Dominance for Processing Semantically Meaningful Pitch. Front Hum Neurosci 2021; 15:621677. [PMID: 33613214 PMCID: PMC7886982 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2021.621677] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/26/2020] [Accepted: 01/12/2021] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
The question of what determines brain laterality for auditory cognitive processing is unresolved. Here, we demonstrate a swap of hemisphere dominance from right to left during semantic interpretation of Chinese lexical tones in native speakers using simultaneously recorded mismatch negativity response and behavioral reaction time during dichotic listening judgment. The mismatch negativity, which is a brain wave response and indexes auditory processing at an early stage, indicated right hemisphere dominance. In contrast, the behavioral reaction time, which reflects auditory processing at a later stage, indicated a right ear listening advantage, or left hemisphere dominance. The observed swap of hemisphere dominance would not occur when the lexical tone was substituted with a meaningless pure tone. This swap reveals dependence of hemisphere labor division initially on acoustic and then on functional cues of auditory inputs in the processing from sound to meaning.
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Affiliation(s)
- Xiao-Dong Wang
- Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.,Auditory Research Laboratory, School of Life Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China
| | - Hong Xu
- Division of Psychology, School of Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore
| | - Zhen Yuan
- Bioimaging Core, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Macau, Macau, China
| | - Hao Luo
- Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, MI, United States
| | - Ming Wang
- Auditory Research Laboratory, School of Life Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China
| | - Hua-Wei Li
- Affiliated Eye and ENT Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
| | - Lin Chen
- Auditory Research Laboratory, School of Life Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China.,Affiliated Eye and ENT Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
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Bell L, Peng ZE, Pausch F, Reindl V, Neuschaefer-Rube C, Fels J, Konrad K. fNIRS Assessment of Speech Comprehension in Children with Normal Hearing and Children with Hearing Aids in Virtual Acoustic Environments: Pilot Data and Practical Recommendations. CHILDREN (BASEL, SWITZERLAND) 2020; 7:E219. [PMID: 33171753 PMCID: PMC7695031 DOI: 10.3390/children7110219] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/29/2020] [Revised: 11/02/2020] [Accepted: 11/05/2020] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
The integration of virtual acoustic environments (VAEs) with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) offers novel avenues to investigate behavioral and neural processes of speech-in-noise (SIN) comprehension in complex auditory scenes. Particularly in children with hearing aids (HAs), the combined application might offer new insights into the neural mechanism of SIN perception in simulated real-life acoustic scenarios. Here, we present first pilot data from six children with normal hearing (NH) and three children with bilateral HAs to explore the potential applicability of this novel approach. Children with NH received a speech recognition benefit from low room reverberation and target-distractors' spatial separation, particularly when the pitch of the target and the distractors was similar. On the neural level, the left inferior frontal gyrus appeared to support SIN comprehension during effortful listening. Children with HAs showed decreased SIN perception across conditions. The VAE-fNIRS approach is critically compared to traditional SIN assessments. Although the current study shows that feasibility still needs to be improved, the combined application potentially offers a promising tool to investigate novel research questions in simulated real-life listening. Future modified VAE-fNIRS applications are warranted to replicate the current findings and to validate its application in research and clinical settings.
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Affiliation(s)
- Laura Bell
- Child Neuropsychology Section, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen University, 52074 Aachen, Germany; (V.R.); (K.K.)
| | - Z. Ellen Peng
- Teaching and Research Area of Medical Acoustics, Institute of Technical Acoustics, RWTH Aachen University, 52074 Aachen, Germany; (F.P.); (J.F.)
- Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53705, USA;
| | - Florian Pausch
- Teaching and Research Area of Medical Acoustics, Institute of Technical Acoustics, RWTH Aachen University, 52074 Aachen, Germany; (F.P.); (J.F.)
| | - Vanessa Reindl
- Child Neuropsychology Section, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen University, 52074 Aachen, Germany; (V.R.); (K.K.)
- JARA-Brain Institute II, Molecular Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, RWTH Aachen & Research Centre Juelich, 52428 Juelich, Germany
| | - Christiane Neuschaefer-Rube
- Clinic of Phoniatrics, Pedaudiology, and Communication Disorders, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen University, 52074 Aachen, Germany;
| | - Janina Fels
- Teaching and Research Area of Medical Acoustics, Institute of Technical Acoustics, RWTH Aachen University, 52074 Aachen, Germany; (F.P.); (J.F.)
| | - Kerstin Konrad
- Child Neuropsychology Section, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, Medical Faculty, RWTH Aachen University, 52074 Aachen, Germany; (V.R.); (K.K.)
- JARA-Brain Institute II, Molecular Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, RWTH Aachen & Research Centre Juelich, 52428 Juelich, Germany
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Li Y, Luo H, Tian X. Mental operations in rhythm: Motor-to-sensory transformation mediates imagined singing. PLoS Biol 2020; 18:e3000504. [PMID: 33017389 PMCID: PMC7561264 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000504] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/29/2019] [Revised: 10/15/2020] [Accepted: 09/01/2020] [Indexed: 11/21/2022] Open
Abstract
What enables the mental activities of thinking verbally or humming in our mind? We hypothesized that the interaction between motor and sensory systems induces speech and melodic mental representations, and this motor-to-sensory transformation forms the neural basis that enables our verbal thinking and covert singing. Analogous with the neural entrainment to auditory stimuli, participants imagined singing lyrics of well-known songs rhythmically while their neural electromagnetic signals were recorded using magnetoencephalography (MEG). We found that when participants imagined singing the same song in similar durations across trials, the delta frequency band (1–3 Hz, similar to the rhythm of the songs) showed more consistent phase coherence across trials. This neural phase tracking of imagined singing was observed in a frontal-parietal-temporal network: the proposed motor-to-sensory transformation pathway, including the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), insula (INS), premotor area, intra-parietal sulcus (IPS), temporal-parietal junction (TPJ), primary auditory cortex (Heschl’s gyrus [HG]), and superior temporal gyrus (STG) and sulcus (STS). These results suggest that neural responses can entrain the rhythm of mental activity. Moreover, the theta-band (4–8 Hz) phase coherence was localized in the auditory cortices. The mu (9–12 Hz) and beta (17–20 Hz) bands were observed in the right-lateralized sensorimotor systems that were consistent with the singing context. The gamma band was broadly manifested in the observed network. The coherent and frequency-specific activations in the motor-to-sensory transformation network mediate the internal construction of perceptual representations and form the foundation of neural computations for mental operations. What enables our mental activities for thinking verbally or humming in our mind? Using an imagined singing paradigm with magnetoencephalography recordings, this study shows that neural oscillations in the motor-to-sensory transformation network tracked inner speech and covert singing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yanzhu Li
- New York University Shanghai, Shanghai, China
- NYU-ECNU Institute of Brain and Cognitive Science at NYU Shanghai, Shanghai, China
| | - Huan Luo
- Peking University, Beijing, China
| | - Xing Tian
- New York University Shanghai, Shanghai, China
- NYU-ECNU Institute of Brain and Cognitive Science at NYU Shanghai, Shanghai, China
- * E-mail:
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Shao J, Zhang C. Dichotic Perception of Lexical Tones in Cantonese-Speaking Congenital Amusics. Front Psychol 2020; 11:1411. [PMID: 32733321 PMCID: PMC7358218 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01411] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/29/2020] [Accepted: 05/26/2020] [Indexed: 11/23/2022] Open
Abstract
Congenital amusia is an inborn neurogenetic disorder of musical pitch processing, which also induces impairment in lexical tone perception. However, it has not been examined before how the brain specialization of lexical tone perception is affected in amusics. The current study adopted the dichotic listening paradigm to examine this issue, testing 18 Cantonese-speaking amusics and 18 matched controls on pitch/lexical tone identification and discrimination in three conditions: non-speech tone, low syllable variation, and high syllable variation. For typical listeners, the discrimination accuracy was higher with shorter RT in the left ear regardless of the stimulus types, suggesting a left-ear advantage in discrimination. When the demand of phonological processing increased, as in the identification task, shorter RT was still obtained in the left ear, however, the identification accuracy revealed a bilateral pattern. Taken together, the results of the identification task revealed a reduced LEA or a shift from the right hemisphere to bilateral processing in identification. Amusics exhibited overall poorer performance in both identification and discrimination tasks, indicating that pitch/lexical tone processing in dichotic listening settings was impaired, but there was no evidence that amusics showed different ear preference from controls. These findings provided temporary evidence that although amusics demonstrate deficient neural mechanisms of pitch/lexical tone processing, their ear preference patterns might not be affected. These results broadened the understanding of the nature of pitch and lexical tone processing deficiencies in amusia.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jing Shao
- School of Humanities, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.,Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen, China
| | - Caicai Zhang
- Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China.,Research Centre for Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China
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