Before infants can learn words, they must identify those words in continuous speech. Yet, the speech signal lacks obvious boundary markers, which poses a potential problem for language acquisition (Swingley, "Philos Trans R Soc Lond. Series B, Biol Sci" 364(1536), 3617-3632, 2009). By the middle of the first year, infants seem to have…

Metacognitive functions are important for both teachers and students to facilitate teaching and learning. The prefrontal cortex (PFC) plays a proven role in metacognition. As a pilot study, we evaluated the PFC activity of teachers and students using near-infrared spectroscopy devices to explore the neural mechanism of PFC underlying metacognitive…

To understand language, humans must encode information from rapid, sequential streams of syllables--tracking their order and organizing them into words, phrases, and sentences. We used Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) to determine whether human neonates are born with the capacity to track the positions of syllables in multisyllabic sequences.…

Purpose: To evaluate potential contributions of broadband spectral integration in the perception of static vowels. Specifically, can the auditory system infer formant frequency information from changes in the intensity weighting across harmonics when the formant itself is missing? Does this type of integration produce the same results in the lower…

As infrared spectroscopy (IR) is frequently used in undergraduate organic chemistry courses, an inductive introduction to IR spectroscopy that uses index cards printed with spectra, structures, and chemical names is described. Groups of students are given an alphabetized deck of these "IR cards" to sort into functional groups. The students then…

Intercellular signaling is vital to communication within neuronal circuits. The suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), the master circadian clock of mammals, contains a dense collection of neurons that align their intrinsic rhythmicity with environmental stimulus and physiological state. While peptide physiology has been demonstrated as a contributor to…