Infant speech perception activates Broca's area: a developmental magnetoencephalography study

Imada, Toshiaki; Zhang, Yang; Cheour, Marie; Taulu, Samu; Ahonen, Antti; Kuhl, Patricia K.

doi:10.1097/01.wnr.0000223387.51704.89

Cited by 195 publications

(164 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Our results of the coherence analysis and correlation analyses by using two types of bandpass filter (lowest cutoff, 0.005 and 0.009 Hz) demonstrated that the correlations between two regions were not solely determined by the lowest frequencies. The roles played by the spontaneous fluctuations in the construction of multiple functional networks in the brain, including the default-mode network (Fransson et al, 2007;Gao et al, 2009) and networks for perception and cognition (Imada et al, 2006;Homae et al, 2007;Watanabe et al, 2008;Nakano et al, 2009), are very interesting. Our results suggest that emerging global networks, manifested as long-range connectivity within and between hemispheres, constrain functional brain development.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of Global Cortical Networks in Early Infancy

Homae¹,

Watanabe²,

Otobe³

et al. 2010

J. Neurosci.

184

213

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Human cognition and behaviors are subserved by global networks of neural mechanisms. Although the organization of the brain is a subject of interest, the process of development of global cortical networks in early infancy has not yet been clarified. In the present study, we explored developmental changes in these networks from several days to 6 months after birth by examining spontaneous fluctuations in brain activity, using multichannel near-infrared spectroscopy. We set up 94 measurement channels over the frontal, temporal, parietal, and occipital regions of the infant brain. The obtained signals showed complex time-series properties, which were characterized as 1/f fluctuations. To reveal the functional connectivity of the cortical networks, we calculated the temporal correlations of continuous signals between all the pairs of measurement channels. We found that the cortical network organization showed regional dependency and dynamic changes in the course of development. In the temporal, parietal, and occipital regions, connectivity increased between homologous regions in the two hemispheres and within hemispheres; in the frontal regions, it decreased progressively. Frontoposterior connectivity changed to a "U-shaped" pattern within 6 months: it decreases from the neonatal period to the age of 3 months and increases from the age of 3 months to the age of 6 months. We applied cluster analyses to the correlation coefficients and showed that the bilateral organization of the networks begins to emerge during the first 3 months of life. Our findings suggest that these developing networks, which form multiple clusters, are precursors of the functional cerebral architecture.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of Global Cortical Networks in Early Infancy

Homae¹,

Watanabe²,

Otobe³

et al. 2010

J. Neurosci.

184

213

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…We tentatively propose that these connections provide the infant brain with an auditory motor loop by which the speech production system is informed, early on, of the identity and rhythm of speech inputs. Converging evidence is provided by a recent paper using magnetoencephalography, which reports the late (800 ms) coupling of a source in inferior frontal region with one in the superior temporal region when 6-and 12-month-olds, but not neonates, discriminate syllables (34).…”

Section: Broca's Area and The Relations Between Speech Perception Andmentioning

confidence: 97%

Functional organization of perisylvian activation during presentation of sentences in preverbal infants

Dehaene‐Lambertz

Hertz-Pannier

Dubois

et al. 2006

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

310

240

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We examined the functional organization of cerebral activity in 3-month-old infants when they were listening to their mother language. Short sentences were presented in a slow event-related functional MRI paradigm. We then parsed the infant's network of perisylvian responsive regions into functionally distinct regions based on their speed of activation and sensitivity to sentence repetition. An adult-like structure of functional MRI response delays was observed along the superior temporal regions, suggesting a hierarchical processing scheme. The fastest responses were recorded in the vicinity of Heschl's gyrus, whereas responses became increasingly slower toward the posterior part of the superior temporal gyrus and toward the temporal poles and inferior frontal regions (Broca's area). Activation in the latter region increased when the sentence was repeated after a 14-s delay, suggesting the early involvement of Broca's area in verbal memory. The fact that Broca's area is active in infants before the babbling stage implies that activity in this region is not the consequence of sophisticated motor learning but, on the contrary, that this region may drive, through interactions with the perceptual system, the learning of the complex motor sequences required for future speech production. Our results point to a complex, hierarchical organization of the human brain in the first months of life, which may play a crucial role in language acquisition in our species.o what extent is the human species predisposed to acquire language? This question is generally debated by comparing the complexity of the speech input with infants' limited processing resources. Infants face the complex problem of being confronted with a continuous auditory signal that they should learn to segment into phonemes, syllables, words, and constituents and combine to understand and produce new information. Because language acquisition is fast, proceeds through a series of reproducible stages, and exhibits a systematicity that seems to go beyond what could possibly be learned from surrounding speech inputs, some researchers have postulated a special-purpose language acquisition device (1). However, infants' capacity of statistical learning (2) combined with the observation that speech possess numerous regularities have strengthened a constructivist view according to which the infant brain progressively extracts regularities in its environmental inputs (3).In most adults, speech processing relies on a hierarchy of well defined areas centered around the left sylvian fissure. Why does language processing systematically call on those regions? Do they possess special properties that can explain language emergence in humans? Examination of their initial functional organization in the first year of life may ultimately clarify how infants take advantage of their environment to achieve the linguistic sophistication of adults. Thanks to the development of noninvasive brain imaging, we can begin to decipher the cerebral resources at infants' disposal to process s...

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“…As in anarthria, however, the absence of speech production does not preclude a contribution from the oromotor system to speech recognition memory, and, indeed, there is evidence (57)(58)(59) that even in early infancy speech sounds activate Broca's area. However, perhaps the more important mechanism for "auditory recognition memory" in early infancy is associative memory.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Test of a motor theory of long-term auditory memory

Schulze

Vargha‐Khadem

Mishkin

2012

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Monkeys can easily form lasting central representations of visual and tactile stimuli, yet they seem unable to do the same with sounds. Humans, by contrast, are highly proficient in auditory long-term memory (LTM). These mnemonic differences within and between species raise the question of whether the human ability is supported in some way by speech and language, e.g., through subvocal reproduction of speech sounds and by covert verbal labeling of environmental stimuli. If so, the explanation could be that storing rapidly fluctuating acoustic signals requires assistance from the motor system, which is uniquely organized to chain-link rapid sequences. To test this hypothesis, we compared the ability of normal participants to recognize lists of stimuli that can be easily reproduced, labeled, or both (pseudowords, nonverbal sounds, and words, respectively) versus their ability to recognize a list of stimuli that can be reproduced or labeled only with great difficulty (reversed words, i.e., words played backward). Recognition scores after 5-min delays filled with articulatory-suppression tasks were relatively high (75-80% correct) for all sound types except reversed words; the latter yielded scores that were not far above chance (58% correct), even though these stimuli were discriminated nearly perfectly when presented as reversed-word pairs at short intrapair intervals. The combined results provide preliminary support for the hypothesis that participation of the oromotor system may be essential for laying down the memory of speech sounds and, indeed, that speech and auditory memory may be so critically dependent on each other that they had to coevolve.evolution | mimic | arcuate fasciculus T he proficiency with which monkeys perform tests of both visual and tactile recognition does not extend to auditory recognition. In vision and touch, monkeys master the rule for one-trial recognition memory extremely rapidly, within several daily sessions (1, 2); and once they have learned the rule, it can be shown that they have stimulus-retention thresholds (performance at 75% accuracy) of 10-20 min after viewing or palpating a novel stimulus for only 1-2 s (3, 4). In audition, by contrast, monkeys acquire the rule for one-trial memory exceedingly slowly, requiring a full year or two of training before they can master it, if they succeed at all; and if they do succeed, their stimulus-retention thresholds are found to extend no longer than 30-40 s after stimulus presentation (5). This marked disparity in mnemonic ability across sensory modalities suggests that, in audition alone, monkeys seem unable to store stimulus representations in long-term memory (LTM) and, consequently, appear to be limited mnemonically to the time period covered by short-term memory. Humans, on the other hand, are highly proficient at storing lasting representations of auditory stimuli, such as words and tunes, thereby enabling their later recognition. What accounts for these striking mnemonic differences between audition and other sensory modalities in...

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Infant speech perception activates Broca's area: a developmental magnetoencephalography study

Cited by 195 publications

References 27 publications

Development of Global Cortical Networks in Early Infancy

Development of Global Cortical Networks in Early Infancy

Functional organization of perisylvian activation during presentation of sentences in preverbal infants

Test of a motor theory of long-term auditory memory

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