The present study investigated whether event-related potentials (ERPs) reflect non-voluntary vs voluntary processing of emotional prosody. ERPs were obtained while participants processed emotional information non-voluntarily (i.e. while evaluating semantic characteristics of a stimulus) and voluntarily (i.e. while evaluating emotional characteristics of a stimulus). Results suggest that emotional prosody is processed around 160 ms after stimulus onset under non-voluntary processing conditions (when the attention is diverted from the emotional meaning of the tone of voice); and around 360 ms under voluntary processing conditions. The findings support the notion that emotional prosody is processed non-voluntarily in the comprehension of a spoken message.
Hearing loss has been associated with poor vitamin B12 status in some, but not all studies. This study examined a possible relationship between age-related hearing loss and poor B12 status in 93 older adults using different indices of B12 status. Hearing loss was defined as pure-tone average threshold > 25 decibel hearing level. Participants with methylmalonic acid (MMA) > 271 nmol/L at baseline received 1,000 g/d, and those with MMA < or = 271 nmol/L were randomly assigned to receive 0, 25, or 100 microg/d of B12. In a series of logistic regression analyses, compared with participants with normal hearing, those with impaired hearing had a significantly higher serum mean MMA concentrations in the best and the worst ears and a higher prevalence of elevated MMA (> 271 nmol/L) in the worst ear only. Thus, elevated MMA concentration may be associated with hearing loss in older adults. However, short-term B12 supplementation was unrelated to improvements in hearing status in B12-deficient individuals.
This study compared obligatory AEPs in response to binaural processing of IIDs in children and adults with normal hearing. The morphology of the AEP waveform in children was different for monaural clicks and IID-present stimuli. The difference between AEPs for monaural clicks and IID-present did not occur in adults. It is likely that polarity reversal of the AEPs in response to the IID accounts for the observed AEP morphology in children.
Long-latency ERP components were examined for scalp activation differences in children with poor and good listening skills in response to auditory movement created by IIDs. Eighteen children were grouped based on a parent questionnaire (CHAPS; Smoski et al, 1998) and clinical evaluation by a licensed audiologist. Obligatory cortical responses were recorded to an auditory movement and an auditory control task. Results showed greatest activation at fronto-central electrode sites. P1, N1, and P2 showed no significant effects. Significant differences in N2 amplitude and latency were present between groups at the lateral electrode sites (FC3, FC4) in the auditory movement but not in the auditory control task. More specifically, good listeners exhibited predominance of activation over the right hemisphere for left-moving sounds, whereas the poor listeners exhibited symmetric activation. These results suggest that abnormal hemispheric activation may be one of the reasons behind poor listening skills observed in some school-aged children.
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