Gervain Judit

Université Paris Déscartes, Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception

The use of near-infrared spectroscopy in developmental psychology: the example of speech perception at birth

helyszín: Stoczek utca 2. St. ép. 320-as terem, 1111 Budapest

időpont: 2010 november 8, 10:00-11:00

!!! Figyelem: a szokásostól eltérően az előadás 10:00-kor kezdődik!!!

Abstract

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is a relatively new but increasingly popular imaging technique, which measures the concentration changes of oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin accompanying brain activity. The technique is particularly useful for imaging the brain of newborns and young infants whose skin and skull are thin, allowing a relatively deep penetration of the NIR light into the cortex. The talk will review the basic principles behind NIRS. This will be followed by the illustration of the use of NIRS to study speech perception in newborn infants. The ability to learn structural regularities is fundamental for the acquisition of language. There is increasing evidence that older infants are able to learn such regularities using different mechanisms (Marcus et al. 1999, Gomez and Gerken 1999). However, it is not know whether these abilities are available at birth or whether they emerge later during development and their neural basis is also unexplored. Therefore, in a series of NIRS studies with newborns, we examined whether they are able to learn identity-based regularities (e.g. ABB "mubaba", AAB "babamu", ABA "bamuba" etc.). Specifically, we explored whether (i) they are able to discriminate these patterns from random ABC controls (e.g. "mubage"), (ii) whether they are able to encode the identity relation as well as its serial position (i.e. whether they are able to discriminate AAB from ABB) and (iii) whether this ability is specific to speech stimuli or whether it applies more broadly to other auditory stimuli, e.g. piano tones. The results of these experiments allow us to better understand the mechanisms and the corresponding neural circuits underlying early speech perception and language acquisition.

Az előadás nyelve angol