Development of Subcortical Pitch Representation in Three-Month-Old Chinese Infants

Abstract

This study investigated the development of subcortical pitch processing, as reflected by the scalp-recorded frequency-following response, during early infancy. Thirteen Chinese infants who were born and raised in Mandarin-speaking households were recruited to partake in this study. Through a prospective-longitudinal study design, infants were tested twice: at 1-3 days after birth and at three months of age. A set of four contrastive Mandarin pitch contours were used to elicit frequency-following responses. Frequency Error and Pitch Strength were derived to represent the accuracy and magnitude of the elicited responses. Paired-samples t tests were conducted and demonstrated a significant decrease in Frequency Error and a significant increase in Pitch Strength at three months of age compared to 1-3 days after birth. Results indicated the developmental trajectory of subcortical pitch processing during the first three months of life.

The Neurophysiological Processing of Music in Children: A Systematic Review With Narrative Synthesis and Considerations for Clinical Practice in Music Therapy

“…Extending the knowledge of the cortically recorded AEP components, the frequency following response (FFR) component indicates that essential subcortical structures utilized for tracking pitch are functional from birth (Jeng et al, 2016a,b). Tracking the development of the FFR across time, Jeng et al (2016b) reported improved subcortical tracking accuracy and pitch strength at 3 months, supporting the hypothesis that neural circuitry involved in processing musical stimuli is refined through development and passive exposure (Jeng et al, 2016b).…”

The Frequency Following Response: Evaluations in Different Age Groups

“…This factor undermined the power of the conclusions and prevented the possibility of performing statistical analyses for each Mandarin tone used. Despite the limitations of the study, the findings fill a gap in understanding the developmental trajectory of subcortical processing during the first 3 months of life [25].…”

“…Even at birth, children are able to detect subtle differences in verbal sounds. Newborns can effectively differentiate all the features of human speech and most infants who participated in an FFR follow-up showed improvement in pitch tracking and response amplitudes at 3 months of age [25]. Such neural refinements observed by FFR are often highlighted in the literature for both infants [22,24] and young infants [15,23].…”

“…An FFR can be recorded from a neonate, but the responses only become readily apparent from the third month of age [15]. The existence of a series of FFR waves-V, A, C, D, E, F, and O-in neonates has been pointed out by several researchers [15,19,[22][23][24][25][26]. FFR evaluations have been performed with the vowel /i/ [15,24], the syllables /ba/ and /ga/ [26], and the syllable /da/ [23].…”

Does a ‘musical’ mother tongue influence cry melodies? A comparative study of Swedish and German newborns

“…They also prefer their native tongue over unfamiliar languages (Mehler et al, 1988;Moon, Cooper, & Fifer, 1993), and discriminate between the synthesised intonation contours of unknown languages (Ramus, 2002). Well-developed subcortical pitch processing has been demonstrated in newborns aged 1 to 3 days using Mandarin tones (Jeng et al, 2016). Pitch-intervals, meanwhile, have been found to be represented in the auditory system just as in adults.…”