We report fMRI and behavioral data from 113 subjects on attention and cognitive control using a variant of the classic dichotic listening paradigm with pairwise presentations of consonant-vowel syllables. The syllable stimuli were presented in a block-design while subjects were in the MR scanner. The subjects were instructed to pay attention to…

In the current ERP study, an active oddball task was carried out, testing pure tones and auditory, visual and audiovisual syllables. For pure tones, an MMN, an N2b, and a P3 were found, confirming traditional findings. Auditory syllables evoked an N2 and a P3. We found that the amplitude of the P3 depended on the distance between standard and…

Blind people can learn to understand speech at ultra-high syllable rates (ca. 20 syllables/s), a capability associated with hemodynamic activation of the central-visual system. To further elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying this skill, magnetoencephalographic (MEG) measurements during listening to sentence utterances were cross-correlated…

Recent experiments showed that the perception of vowel length by German listeners exhibits the characteristics of categorical perception. The present study sought to find the neural activity reflecting categorical vowel length and the short-long boundary by examining the processing of non-contrastive durations and categorical length using MEG.…

The influence of diet on cortical processing of syllables was examined at 3 and 6 months in 239 infants who were breastfed or fed milk or soy-based formula. Event-related potentials to syllables differing in voice-onset-time were recorded from placements overlying brain areas specialized for language processing. P1 component amplitude and latency…

The hereditary ataxias constitute a group of degenerative diseases that progress over years or decades. With principal pathology involving the cerebellum, dysarthria is an early feature of many of the ataxias. Positron emission tomography was used to study regional cerebral blood flow changes during speech production over a 21 month period in a…

This study presents evidence suggesting that electrophysiological responses to language-related auditory stimuli recorded at 46 weeks postconceptional age (PCA) are associated with language development, particularly in infants with periventricular leukomalacia (PVL). In order to investigate this hypothesis, electrophysiological responses to a set…

Functional imaging studies have delineated a "minimal network for overt speech production," encompassing mesiofrontal structures (supplementary motor area, anterior cingulate gyrus), bilateral pre- and postcentral convolutions, extending rostrally into posterior parts of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) of the language-dominant hemisphere, left…

The present study examined whether written syllable units are perceived in first steps of letter string processing. An illusory conjunction experiment was conducted while event-related potentials were recorded. Colored pseudowords were presented such that there was a match or mismatch between the syllable boundaries and the color boundaries. The…

Most existing models of language production and speech motor control do not explicitly address how language requirements affect speech motor functions, as these domains are usually treated as separate and independent from one another. This investigation compared lip movements during bilabial closure between five individuals with mild aphasia and…

This study conducted a follow-up of 13 early-onset slightly disabled Relapsing-Remitting Multiple Sclerosis (RRMS) patients within an year, evaluating both CC area measurements in a midsagittal Magnetic Resonance (MR) image, and Dichotic Listening (DL) testing with stop consonant vowel (C-V) syllables. Patients showed a significant progressive…

There is no consensus regarding the fundamental phonetic units that underlie speech production. There is, however, general agreement that the frequency of occurrence of these units is a significant factor. Investigators often use the effects of manipulating frequency to support the importance of particular units. Studies of pseudoword production…

Pre-linguistic sensory deficits, especially in "temporal" processing, have been implicated in developmental language impairment (LI). However, recent evidence has been equivocal with data suggesting problems in the spectral domain. The present study examined event-related potential (ERP) measures of auditory sensory temporal and spectral…

The aim of this study is to develop a partial theory of phonological paraphasias which has some cross-syndrome and cross-linguistic validity. It is based on the distinction between content and structural units and emphasizes the role of the latter. The notion of structure holds the key to an understanding of the differences among the following…

Form-priming effects from sublexical (syllabic or segmental) primes in masked priming can be accounted for in two ways. One is the sublexical pre-activation view according to which segments are pre-activated by the prime, and at the time the form-related target is to be produced, retrieval/assembly of those pre-activated segments is faster…