Linguistic experience alters an individual's perception of speech. We here provide evidence of the effects of language experience at the neural level from two magnetoencephalography (MEG) studies that compare adult American and Japanese listeners' phonetic processing. The experimental stimuli were American English /ra/ and /la/ syllables, phonemic in English but not in Japanese. In Experiment 1, the control stimuli were /ba/ and /wa/ syllables, phonemic in both languages; in Experiment 2, they were non-speech replicas of /ra/ and /la/. The behavioral and neuromagnetic results showed that Japanese listeners were less sensitive to the phonemic /r-l/ difference than American listeners. Furthermore, processing non-native speech sounds recruited significantly greater brain resources in both hemispheres and required a significantly longer period of brain activation in two regions, the superior temporal area and the inferior parietal area. The control stimuli showed no significant differences except that the duration effect in the superior temporal cortex also applied to the non-speech replicas. We argue that early exposure to a particular language produces a "neural commitment" to the acoustic properties of that language and that this neural commitment interferes with foreign language processing, making it less efficient.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2005.02.040DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

effects language
8
language experience
8
experience neural
8
neural commitment
8
/ra/ /la/
8
syllables phonemic
8
control stimuli
8
non-speech replicas
8
superior temporal
8
commitment language-specific
4

Similar Publications

Learning the language of antibody hypervariability.

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

January 2025

Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139.

Protein language models (PLMs) have demonstrated impressive success in modeling proteins. However, general-purpose "foundational" PLMs have limited performance in modeling antibodies due to the latter's hypervariable regions, which do not conform to the evolutionary conservation principles that such models rely on. In this study, we propose a transfer learning framework called Antibody Mutagenesis-Augmented Processing (AbMAP), which fine-tunes foundational models for antibody-sequence inputs by supervising on antibody structure and binding specificity examples.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Semantical text understanding holds significant importance in natural language processing (NLP). Numerous datasets, such as Quora Question Pairs (QQP), have been devised for this purpose. In our previous study, we developed a Siamese Convolutional Neural Network (S-CNN) that achieved an F1 score of 82.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Associations between variants in the FTO locus and plasma concentrations of appetite related hormones are inconsistent, and might not work in a dose dependent fashion in people with obesity. Moreover, it is relevant to report meal related plasma concentrations of these hormones in persons with obesity given the growing interest in their pharmacological potential in obesity therapy. We find it clinically relevant to examine associations between the SNP rs9939609 genotypes and homeostatic appetite regulation in individuals with BMI ≥35 kg/m2.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Neonatal and Home-Based PT Improves Neurodevelopmental Outcomes of Preterm Infants-A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Pediatr Phys Ther

January 2025

Department of Physical Therapy, Ellmer College of Health Sciences, Macon & Joan Brock Virginia Health Sciences, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia (Dr Khurana); Department of Pediatrics, Kasturba Medical College, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, India (Dr Lewis); School of Exercise Science, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia (Dr Russell); Sykes Chair of Pediatric Physical Therapy, Health, and Development, University of Southern California, Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy, Los Angeles, California (Dr Dusing); Department of Physiotherapy, Manipal College of Health Professions, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, India (Dr Krishna Rao).

Purpose: Investigate the effect of structured neonatal physical therapy program (SNP) on neurodevelopmental outcomes of moderate and late preterm (MLP) infants.

Methods: Sixty MLP infants were randomly allocated to usual care (UC) or SNP. A previous publication reported the effect of neonatal component of SNP at hospital discharge.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Word-of-mouth referrals between patients are a critical component of medical tourism for pediatric hematopoietic cell transplantation.

Medicine (Baltimore)

January 2025

Division of Hematology/Oncology, Department of Pediatrics, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Chang Gung University, Taoyuan, Taiwan.

The increasing popularity of medical tourism has sparked interest from policymakers, researchers, and the media. Factors influencing medical tourism include service quality, availability, economics, and cultural differences. This study aims to analyze the key factors that influence destination selection for medical tourists.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!