Neural oscillations in the service of speech processing and language development

The talk will present a series of neuroimaging studies with young infants investigating how embedded neural oscillations, the neural architecture argued to be responsible for speech processing in adults (Giraud & Poeppel 2012), emerges during early development. Specifically, the studies investigate the hypothesis that prenatally heard speech, strongly low-pass filtered by the intrauterine environment, already align slower oscillations, delta and theta, with the rhythms of the language heard prenatally, while the full-band speech signal experienced postnattaly aligns the faster gammas oscillations. As a result, the hierarchy of neural oscillations found in adults emerges as a result of the chronology of infants’ early experience with speech. Furthermore, the talk will suggest that it is possible to find the neural signatures of learning and attuning to the native language already at birth in the temporal dynamics of newborn infants’ electrophysiological responses. To conclude, the talk will discuss how this may lay the foundations for later language development.

Dear all,

The CEU Department of Cognitive Science invites you to the following talk:

Judit Gervain (University of Padua, Italy/CNRS & Université Paris Descartes)

Neural oscillations in the service of speech processing and language development

The talk will present a series of neuroimaging studies with young infants investigating how embedded neural oscillations, the neural architecture argued to be responsible for speech processing in adults (Giraud & Poeppel 2012), emerges during early development. Specifically, the studies investigate the hypothesis that prenatally heard speech, strongly low-pass filtered by the intrauterine environment, already align slower oscillations, delta and theta, with the rhythms of the language heard prenatally, while the full-band speech signal experienced post-nasally aligns the faster gammas oscillations. As a result the hierarchy of neural oscillations found in adults emerges as a result of the chronology of infants’ early experience with speech. Furthermore, the talk will suggest that it is possible to find the neural signatures of learning and attuning to the native language already at birth in the temporal dynamics of newborn infants’ electrophysiological responses. To conclude, the talk will discuss how this may lay the foundations for later language development.

Date: Wednesday, Nov 15, 2023

Time: 4 pm (to 5:30 pm) CET

Venue: Auditorium* (QS Vienna) and Zoom (meeting ID: 969 2496 5784, passcode: 471712)

Chair: Ernő Téglás

*Anyone not affiliated with CEU wishing to attend in-person in Vienna must RSVP here to get access to the lecture hall.

If you want to schedule a meeting with Dr. Gervain, indicate your interest and availability here (via doodle).

Best,

Bartu