Considerable knowledge on neural development related to speech perception has been obtained by functional imaging studies using near-infrared spectroscopy (optical topography). In particular, a pioneering study showed stronger left-dominant activation in the temporal lobe for (normal) forward speech (FW) than for (reversed) backward speech (BW) in neonates. However, it is unclear whether this stronger left-dominant activation for FW is equally observed for any language or is clearer for the mother tongue. We hypothesized that the maternal language elicits clearer activation than a foreign language in newborns because of their prenatal and/or few-day postnatal exposure to the maternal language. To test this hypothesis, we developed a whole-head optode cap for 72-channel optical topography and visualized the spatiotemporal hemodynamics in the brains of 17 Japanese newborns when they were exposed to FW and BW in their maternal language (Japanese) and in a foreign language (English). Statistical analysis showed that all sound stimuli together induced significant activation in the bilateral temporal regions and the frontal region. They also showed that the left temporal-parietal region was significantly more active for Japanese FW than Japanese BW or English FW, while no significant difference between FW and BW was shown for English. This supports our hypothesis and suggests that the few-day-old brain begins to become attuned to the maternal language. Together with a finding of equivalent activation for all sound stimuli in the adjacent measurement positions in the temporal region, these findings further clarify the functional organization of the neonatal brain.
This study focuses on the early cerebral base of speech perception by examining functional lateralization in neonates for processing segmental and suprasegmental features of speech. For this purpose, auditory evoked responses of full-term neonates to phonemic and prosodic contrasts were measured in their temporal area and part of the frontal and parietal areas using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). Stimuli used here were phonemic contrast /itta/ and /itte/ and prosodic contrast of declarative and interrogative forms /itta/ and /itta?/. The results showed clear hemodynamic responses to both phonemic and prosodic changes in the temporal areas and part of the parietal and frontal regions. In particular, significantly higher hemoglobin (Hb) changes were observed for the prosodic change in the right temporal area than for that in the left one, whereas Hb responses to the vowel change were similarly elicited in bilateral temporal areas. However, Hb responses to the vowel contrast were asymmetrical in the parietal area (around supra marginal gyrus), with stronger activation in the left. These results suggest a specialized function of the right hemisphere in prosody processing, which is already present in neonates. The parietal activities during phonemic processing were discussed in relation to verbal-auditory short-term memory. On the basis of this study and previous studies on older infants, the developmental process of functional lateralization from birth to 2 years of age for vowel and prosody was summarized.
Several different types of motion mechanisms function in the human visual system. The purpose of this study was to clarify the type of reference frame, such as retinotopic and spatiotopic frames of reference, at which those different motion mechanisms function. To achieve this, we used a phenomenon called visual motion priming, in which the perceived direction of a directionally ambiguous test stimulus is influenced by the moving direction of a preceding stimulus. Previous studies have indicated that negative motion priming is induced by a low-level motion mechanism, such as a first-order motion sensor, whereas positive motion priming is induced by a high-level motion mechanism, such as a feature-tracking system. In the experiments, subjects made a saccade after the termination of a smoothly drifting priming stimulus and judged the perceived direction of a 180° phase-shifted sine-wave grating presented subsequently in retinotopic or screen-based spatiotopic coordinates. By manipulating the stimulus parameters, such as primer duration, velocity, and contrast, both positive and negative priming were observed. We found that positive priming was observed in spatiotopic coordinates, whereas negative priming was observed in retinotopic coordinates. Prominent positive priming in spatiotopic coordinates was observed only when the interval between the priming and test stimuli was longer than around 600 ms. This delayed priming effect was not caused by saccadic eye movements. These results suggest that a low-level motion mechanism functions in retinotopic coordinates, whereas a high-level motion mechanism functions in spatiotopic coordinates, in which the representation builds up slowly.
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