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The Journal of Neuroscience, November 25, 2009, 29(47):14726-14733; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1246-09.2009

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Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Sensitivity of Newborn Auditory Cortex to the Temporal Structure of Sounds

Silke Telkemeyer,^1,2 Sonja Rossi,¹ Stefan P. Koch,¹ Till Nierhaus,¹ Jens Steinbrink,¹ David Poeppel,³ Hellmuth Obrig,^1,4,5 * and Isabell Wartenburger^1,6 *

¹Berlin NeuroImaging Center, Charité University Medicine, 10117 Berlin, Germany, ²Department of Cognitive Psychology, Humboldt-University Berlin, 10099 Berlin, Germany, ³Department of Psychology, New York University, New York, New York 10003, ⁴Department of Cognitive Neurology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, ⁵University Hospital, 04103 Leipzig, Germany, and ⁶Department of Linguistics, University of Potsdam, 14476 Potsdam, Germany

Correspondence should be addressed to Silke Telkemeyer, Berlin NeuroImaging Center, Charité University Medicine, Charitéplatz 1, 10117 Berlin, Germany. Email: silke.telkemeyer{at}charite.de

Understanding the rapidly developing building blocks of speech perception in infancy requires a close look at the auditory prerequisites for speech sound processing. Pioneering studies have demonstrated that hemispheric specializations for language processing are already present in early infancy. However, whether these computational asymmetries can be considered a function of linguistic attributes or a consequence of basic temporal signal properties is under debate. Several studies in adults link hemispheric specialization for certain aspects of speech perception to an asymmetry in cortical tuning and reveal that the auditory cortices are differentially sensitive to spectrotemporal features of speech. Applying concurrent electrophysiological (EEG) and hemodynamic (near-infrared spectroscopy) recording to newborn infants listening to temporally structured nonspeech signals, we provide evidence that newborns process nonlinguistic acoustic stimuli that share critical temporal features with language in a differential manner. The newborn brain preferentially processes temporal modulations especially relevant for phoneme perception. In line with multi-time-resolution conceptions, modulations on the time scale of phonemes elicit strong bilateral cortical responses. Our data furthermore suggest that responses to slow acoustic modulations are lateralized to the right hemisphere. That is, the newborn auditory cortex is sensitive to the temporal structure of the auditory input and shows an emerging tendency for functional asymmetry. Hence, our findings support the hypothesis that development of speech perception is linked to basic capacities in auditory processing. From birth, the brain is tuned to critical temporal properties of linguistic signals to facilitate one of the major needs of humans: to communicate.

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Received March 13, 2009; revised July 13, 2009; accepted July 24, 2009.

Correspondence should be addressed to Silke Telkemeyer, Berlin NeuroImaging Center, Charité University Medicine, Charitéplatz 1, 10117 Berlin, Germany. Email: silke.telkemeyer{at}charite.de

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