Encoding of pitch in the human brainstem is sensitive to language experience

Krishnan, Ananthanarayan; Xu, Yisheng; Gandour, Jackson T.; Cariani, Peter

doi:10.1016/j.cogbrainres.2005.05.004

Cited by 388 publications

(453 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…The results of our study show that FFR plasticity is not limited to a critical period during childhood, although it is still possible that FFR plasticity is greater during early development. The larger size of the FFR enhancement effects observed in speakers of a tone language (e.g., Krishnan et al 2005) compared to the present study is compatible with this hypothesis. However these differences may also be due to differences in the amount of "training", which can be measured in terms of years for native tone language speakers, and only hours for the participants of our study.…”

Section: Subcortical Plasticity In the Auditory Systemsupporting

confidence: 88%

“…1). In order to maximize the chances of observing possible training effects on the FFR, the average F0 of the stimuli, and the F0 excursion of the dynamic pitch contour stimuli were similar to those of the Mandarin tones which have been used in previous research on FFR plasticity (e.g., Krishnan et al 2005).…”

Section: Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The results of our study complement a growing body of research indicating that long-term experience in the discrimination and identification of pitch-evoking stimuli, obtained through the acquisition of a tone language or musical practice, modifies auditory processing at the level of the brainstem (see Tzounopoulos and Kraus 2009; Krishnan and Gandour 2009 for reviews). These studies have shown that speakers of tone languages (Krishnan et al 2005(Krishnan et al , 2010 and musicians (Wong et al 2007;Bidelman et al 2009) have enhanced subcortical phase locking to the envelope of periodic sounds in comparison to English speakers without musical experience. In speakers of a tone language, these effects are present for both speech-like and non-speech stimuli, and are greater for tonal segments with highly accelerated F0 contours (Xu et al 2006;Swaminathan et al 2008;Krishnan et al 2009b), which are characteristic of tone languages (Eady 1982).…”

Section: Subcortical Plasticity In the Auditory Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Musicians (Wong et al 2007;Bidelman et al 2009) and speakers of a tone language (Krishnan et al 2005(Krishnan et al , 2009aSwaminathan et al 2008) show more robust subcortical "phase locking" in response to pitchevoking sounds compared to English speakers without musical experience. This has been demonstrated using scalp recordings of the frequency following response (FFR), an evoked potential which reflects neural phase locking of brainstem nuclei (inferior colliculus and lateral lemniscus, Smith et al 1975;Gardi et al 1979) to the envelope of a sound.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Subcortical Plasticity Following Perceptual Learning in a Pitch Discrimination Task

Carcagno

Plack

2010

JARO

134

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Practice can lead to dramatic improvements in the discrimination of auditory stimuli. In this study, we investigated changes of the frequency-following response (FFR), a subcortical component of the auditory evoked potentials, after a period of pitch discrimination training. Twenty-seven adult listeners were trained for 10 h on a pitch discrimination task using one of three different complex tone stimuli. One had a static pitch contour, one had a rising pitch contour, and one had a falling pitch contour. Behavioral measures of pitch discrimination and FFRs for all the stimuli were measured before and after the training phase for these participants, as well as for an untrained control group (n=12). Trained participants showed significant improvements in pitch discrimination compared to the control group for all three trained stimuli. These improvements were partly specific for stimuli with the same pitch modulation (dynamic vs. static) and with the same pitch trajectory (rising vs. falling) as the trained stimulus. Also, the robustness of FFR neural phase locking to the sound envelope increased significantly more in trained participants compared to the control group for the static and rising contour, but not for the falling contour. Changes in FFR strength were partly specific for stimuli with the same pitch modulation (dynamic vs. static) of the trained stimulus. Changes in FFR strength, however, were not specific for stimuli with the same pitch trajectory (rising vs. falling) as the trained stimulus. These findings indicate that even relatively low-level processes in the mature auditory system are subject to experience-related change.

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Section: Subcortical Plasticity In the Auditory Systemsupporting

confidence: 88%

Section: Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Subcortical Plasticity In the Auditory Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Subcortical Plasticity Following Perceptual Learning in a Pitch Discrimination Task

Carcagno

Plack

2010

JARO

134

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“…A subsequent crosslanguage FFR study of Mandarin speech stimuli further shows that Mandarin tones elicit stronger pitch representation and smoother pitch tracking by Chinese listeners as compared to English listeners [12]. This experience-dependent effect, however, appears to occur only when the speech stimuli reflect prototypical, curvilinear dynamic contours representative of Mandarin tones as opposed to linear dynamic approximations [13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Applications of Static and Dynamic Iterated Rippled Noise to Evaluate Pitch Encoding in the Human Auditory Brainstem

Swaminathan

Krishnan

Gandour

et al. 2008

IEEE Trans. Biomed. Eng.

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Abstract-This paper presents a new application of the dynamic iterated rippled noise (IRN) algorithm by generating dynamic pitch contours representative of those that occur in natural speech in the context of EEG and the frequency following response (FFR). Besides IRN steady state and linear rising stimuli, curvilinear rising stimuli were modeled after pitch contours of natural productions of Mandarin Tone 2. Electrophysiological data on pitch representation at the level of the brainstem, as reflected in FFR, were evaluated for all stimuli, static or dynamic. Autocorrelation peaks were observed corresponding to the fundamental period ( ) as well as spectral bands at the fundamental and its harmonics for both a low and a high iteration step. At the higher iteration step, both spectral and temporal FFR representations were more robust, indicating that both acoustic properties may be utilized for pitch extraction at the level of the brainstem. By applying curvilinear IRN stimuli to elicit FFRs, we can evaluate the effects of temporal degradation on 1) the neural representation of linguistically-relevant pitch features in a target population (e.g., cochlear implant) and 2) the efficacy of signal processing schemes in conventional hearing aids and cochlear implants to recover these features.Index Terms-Auditory brainstem, cochlear implant, experience dependent plasticity, frequency following response, iterated rippled noise, pitch, signal processing.

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Encoding of pitch in the human brainstem is sensitive to language experience

Cited by 388 publications

References 35 publications

Subcortical Plasticity Following Perceptual Learning in a Pitch Discrimination Task

Subcortical Plasticity Following Perceptual Learning in a Pitch Discrimination Task

Applications of Static and Dynamic Iterated Rippled Noise to Evaluate Pitch Encoding in the Human Auditory Brainstem

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