Article
Biology
Javier Andreu-Perez, Lauren L. Emberson, Mehrin Kiani, Maria Laura Filippetti, Hani Hagras, Silvia Rigato
Summary: Researchers developed a new multivariate pattern analysis method xMVPA, supported by eXplainable Artificial Intelligence, to investigate infants' visual and auditory processing and provide insights into cortical network patterns. The method identified patterns of cortical interactions and provided new evidence for brain networks involved in processing visual and auditory stimuli.
COMMUNICATIONS BIOLOGY
(2021)
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Naoto Yamane, Yutaka Sato, Yoko Shimura, Reiko Mazuka
Summary: The study found that infants' processing of songs changes with age, with 4.5-month-olds showing a preference for processing lyrics or melody separately and 12-month-olds showing a preference for processing both lyrics and melody simultaneously.
Article
Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology
Carola de Beer, Andrea Hofmann, Frank Regenbrecht, Clara Huttenlauch, Isabell Wartenburger, Hellmuth Obrig, Sandra Hanne
Summary: This study compared the abilities of individuals with right hemisphere brain damage (RHDP) and left hemisphere brain damage (LHDP) in processing linguistic prosody and found limitations in their comprehension and production of prosodically marked structural boundaries. RHDP participants showed a stronger reliance on final lengthening, while LHDP participants relied more on f(0) range and pause duration to mark boundaries. Prosody was found to be affected but not completely impaired in both groups, suggesting its relevance as a communicative resource.
JOURNAL OF SPEECH LANGUAGE AND HEARING RESEARCH
(2022)
Article
Biology
Yuta Tezuka, Kenta M. Hagihara, Kenichi Ohki, Tomoo Hirano, Yoshiaki Tagawa
Summary: Spontaneous network activity in the developing neocortex plays a crucial role in the formation of long-range axonal projections. Manipulating neuronal activity during a critical developmental window is necessary for the establishment of projections in the mouse visual cortex.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Christina M. Cerkevich, Jean-Alban Rathelot, Peter L. Strick
Summary: This study examines the cortical control of a laryngeal muscle, essential for vocalization in marmosets and macaques. The researchers find that the expansion of descending output from the premotor areas, particularly ventral area 6 and supplementary motor area, contributes to the enhanced vocal motor abilities in marmosets.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
(2022)
Article
Psychology, Developmental
Anna Martinez-Alvarez, Silvia Benavides-Varela, Alexandre Lapillonne, Judit Gervain
Summary: Prosody is a fundamental organizing principle of spoken language, and infants are already capable of detecting prosodic violations at birth. This ability is supported by brain areas similar to those in adults, particularly in the right hemisphere.
DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Medicine, General & Internal
Goetz Schmidt, Hannes Kreissl, Ursula Vigelius-Rauch, Emmanuel Schneck, Fabian Edinger, Holger Nef, Andreas Boening, Michael Sander, Christian Koch
Summary: This study aimed to evaluate the changes in cerebral tissue oxygen saturation (rSO(2)) following transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI). The results showed that rSO(2) significantly increased after TAVI, but only in patients with preoperative rSO(2) < 60%. Hemoglobin was identified as the only predictor of altered rSO(2). Further prospective studies are needed to confirm the rise in rSO(2) and provide more information on the value of cerebral oximetry in identifying high-risk patients during TAVI procedures.
JOURNAL OF CLINICAL MEDICINE
(2022)
Article
Neurosciences
Silvia Ortiz-Mantilla, Cynthia P. Roesler, Teresa Realpe-Bonilla, April A. Benasich
Summary: Plasticity of the infant brain plays a crucial role in their interaction with environmental sensory events. Early interactive acoustic experience (IAE) improves syllable processing efficiency and has enduring effects beyond the training period. The trained group shows more mature and efficient acoustic processing, leading to better representation and discrimination of syllabic content. The IAE modulates theta phase synchrony in the left auditory cortex, which is associated with language scores.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Doris Hernandez, Salme Karkkainen, Terhi Tulonen, Paivi Helenius, Riitta Salmelin, Tiina Parviainen
Summary: The nature of auditory processing problems in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) is still poorly understood. This study investigated whether children with DLD demonstrate atypical interhemispheric asymmetry during the auditory processing of speech and non-speech sounds and whether attention modulates this interhemispheric balance. The results showed that children with DLD exhibited atypical interhemispheric asymmetry during passive listening but not during active listening. The study highlights the dynamic and interhemispheric nature of auditory processing in DLD and suggests that attention can help to regulate this balance.
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
(2022)
Article
Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology
Shota A. Murai, Hiroshi Riquimaroux
Summary: This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the cerebral activity associated with the degree of subjective comprehension of noise-vocoded speech sounds (NVSS). The results showed that higher comprehension of NVSS sentences was associated with greater activation in the right superior temporal cortex, and that activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus (Broca's area) increased when a listener recognized words in a sentence they did not fully comprehend. Additionally, recognition of words in an NVSS sentence was found to lead to less lateralized responses in the temporal cortex, suggesting that changes in lateralization in the temporal auditory cortex may be associated with variation in comprehension within individuals.
Article
Neurosciences
Xiaoshuai Li, Yansheng Zhao, Ying Hui, Yuntao Wu, Qian Chen, Huijing Shi, Han Lv, Mengning Li, Pengfei Zhao, Wenfei Zhang, Xinyu Zhao, Jing Li, Liufu Cui, Zhenchang Wang
Summary: This study assessed the lateralization of cerebral blood flow in the auditory cortex of patients with idiopathic tinnitus and healthy controls using 3D pseudocontinuous arterial spin labeling. The results showed a significant asymmetry in cerebral blood flow between the left and right hemispheres of the auditory cortex in both tinnitus patients and healthy controls. Tinnitus patients exhibited higher cerebral blood flow in the bilateral primary auditory cortex compared to healthy controls, and the severity of tinnitus was positively correlated with cerebral blood flow in the left primary auditory cortex.
FRONTIERS IN NEUROSCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Jean-Remy Hochmann, Juan M. Toro
Summary: Through pupillometry experiments, results show that 11-month-old infants are able to compute both identity and negation, as well as express negative representations without external language.
Article
Neurosciences
Nikos Chalas, Christoph Daube, Daniel S. Kluger, Omid Abbasi, Robert Nitsch, Joachim Gross
Summary: When we listen to someone speak, our brain activity aligns with the incoming acoustic input. This study used magnetoencephalographic recordings to investigate the acoustic events that drive this alignment. The results showed that sustained acoustic fluctuations in the speech envelope were associated with speech-brain coupling in the theta-frequency range, while tracking of speech onsets in the low-frequency delta range was strongest. These findings suggest a temporal dissociation of acoustically driven oscillatory activity in auditory areas during speech tracking.
Article
Medicine, General & Internal
Melinda Matyas, Mihaela Iancu, Monica Hasmasanu, Anca Man, Gabriela Zaharie
Summary: This study revealed that IVH, inotrope support, and episodes of apnea can lead to a decreased cerebral oxygen saturation in preterm newborns.
JOURNAL OF CLINICAL MEDICINE
(2022)
Review
Behavioral Sciences
Dawoon Choi, H. Henny Yeung, Janet F. Werker
Summary: The perceptual system for speech is highly organized from early infancy, and not only auditory modality, but also motor and sensorimotor systems play a role in speech perception in infants too young to produce speech-like vocalizations. This research complements previous studies on infant vocal development and the interaction between speech perception and production systems in adults. A multimodal speech and language network exists before speech-like vocalizations emerge.
TRENDS IN COGNITIVE SCIENCES
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Rahma Chaabouni, Eugene Kharitonov, Emmanuel Dupoux, Marco Baroni
Summary: The study found that artificial neural networks trained with deep learning techniques develop communication systems that closely resemble human languages in terms of accuracy and complexity. Emerging language systems tend to prefer low-complexity solutions for efficient communication.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
(2021)
Article
Acoustics
Rachid Riad, Julien Karadayi, Anne-Catherine Bachoud-Levi, Emmanuel Dupoux
Summary: Deep learning models have become potential candidates for auditory neuroscience research, with a focus on interpretability through a parametrized neural network layer utilizing Gabor filters to compute specific spectro-temporal modulations. Results show that models based on learnable STRFs are competitive with state-of-the-art methods across various tasks, achieving the best performance in speech activity detection. The distribution of learned spectro-temporal modulations suggests adaptability to different tasks, with filters showing similarity to parameters in the human auditory cortex for speech tasks.
JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
(2021)
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Bogdan Ludusan, Alejandrina Cristia, Reiko Mazuka, Emmanuel Dupoux
Summary: The study found that providing expert-annotated prosodic breaks may not uniformly help all segmentation models, with sub-lexical algorithms benefitting the most. Errors in the detection of boundaries from automatically derived prosodic information lead to smaller positive effects, and even negative effects for some algorithms when acoustic cues known to be sensitive to infants are used in the analysis.
Review
Psychology, Developmental
Alejandrina Cristia
Summary: Anthropological reports and systematic reviews indicate that there is a significant difference in the frequency of vocalizations directed to infants in urban and rural populations, as well as among different socio-economic statuses within the United States. Further research is needed to understand the underlying causes and effects of these population group differences.
DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Psychology, Developmental
Naomi Havron, Camila Scaff, Kasia Hitczenko, Alejandrina Cristia
Summary: This commentary argues for increasing diversity in language acquisition research by setting specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-defined goals, prioritizing solutions based on their importance, tractability, and neglectedness, ideally in collaboration with various organizations outside the research community.
Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Izzy Gainsburg, Shiva Pauer, Nawal Abboub, Eamon T. Aloyo, Jean-Christophe Mourrat, Alejandrina Cristia
Summary: This article introduces the application of effective altruism in the field of psychology, discusses the important principles of effective altruism, and proposes ideas for how psychology as a field can increase its positive impact.
PERSPECTIVES ON PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Psychology, Developmental
Cecile Issard, Sho Tsuji, Alejandrina Cristia
Summary: Previous studies showed that humans' advanced speech perception abilities are rooted in their early attention to speech in the auditory environment. This study used a meta-analytic approach to investigate whether this preference is due to vocal, natural, or familiar characteristics of speech. By synthesizing data from 791 infants across 39 experiments, the researchers confirmed that infants consistently prefer speech over other sounds, regardless of language, vocal quality, naturalness, or infant age. The findings suggest that speech is preferred for its own characteristics rather than its vocal, natural, or familiar nature.
Article
Psychology, Developmental
Alejandrina Cristia, Lucas Gautheron, Heidi Colleran
Summary: This study investigated the vocal experiences of children growing up in a multilingual environment on Malakula island, Vanuatu. The results showed that children's vocal input primarily came from female adults and other children, with minimal contributions from male adults. As children grew older, the vocalizations from other children increased. While the overall input quantity was slightly lower compared to other populations, children's own vocalization counts were higher and comparable to monolingual infants in North America.
DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE
(2023)
Review
Psychology, Developmental
Leher Singh, Alejandrina Cristia, Lana B. Karasik, Sarah J. Rajendra, Lisa M. Oakes
Summary: Psychological researchers are concerned about the narrow participant representation in generalized accounts of human behavior, especially in the field of infant research. This article examines participant diversity and representation in studies on infant development published in four journals over the past decade. The analysis reveals consistent under-reporting of sociodemographic information and a bias towards White infants from North America/Western Europe. To address the lack of diversity and its scientific impact, a set of principles and practices are proposed to promote a more globally representative science.
Article
Psychology, Developmental
Paulina Aravena-Bravo, Alejandrina Cristia, Rowena Garcia, Hiromasa Kotera, Ramona Kunene Nicolas, Ronel Laranjo, Bolanle Elizabeth Arokoyo, Silvia Benavides-Varela, Titia Benders, Natalie Boll-Avetisyan, Margaret Cychosz, Rodrigo Dal Ben, Yatma Diop, Catalina Duran-Urzua, Naomi Havron, Marie Manalili, Bhuvana Narasimhan, Paul Okyere Omane, Caroline Rowland, Leticia Schiavon Kolberg, Andrew Sentoogo Ssemata, Suzy J. J. Styles, Belen Troncoso-Acosta, Fei Ting Woon
Summary: In order to empower researchers all over the world to contribute to language development, we organized the First Truly Global /L+/ International Summer/ Winter School on Language Acquisition, a free 5-day virtual school for early career researchers. This paper describes the school, our experience organizing it, and the lessons we learned. The school had a diverse organizer team, with 26 researchers from underrepresented areas, and a diverse volunteer team, with 95 volunteers from 35 different countries, promoting the school globally. The school received 958 registrations from 88 countries, with 300 selected to participate in the synchronous aspects of the event.
JOURNAL OF COGNITION AND DEVELOPMENT
(2023)
Article
Engineering, Electrical & Electronic
Ewan Dunbar, Nicolas Hamilakis, Emmanuel Dupoux
Summary: Recent advancements in self-supervised or unsupervised machine learning have allowed the development of a complete speech processing system using raw audio, without the need for textual representations or expert labels. The Zero Resource Speech Challenge series, since 2015, has contributed by breaking down this objective into four well-defined tasks and introducing associated metrics and benchmarks for model comparison and progress assessment.
IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN SIGNAL PROCESSING
(2022)
Proceedings Paper
Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology
Adam Polyak, Yossi Adi, Jade Copet, Eugene Kharitonov, Kushal Lakhotia, Wei-Ning Hsu, Abdelrahman Mohamed, Emmanuel Dupoux
Summary: This study suggests using self-supervised discrete representations for speech resynthesis, separating speech content, prosodic information, and speaker identity for controllable speech synthesis. By analyzing various self-supervised representation learning methods and evaluating reconstruction quality and disentanglement properties, an ultra-lightweight speech codec was developed using these representations, achieving a rate of 365 bits per second with improved speech quality compared to baseline methods.
Proceedings Paper
Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology
Ewan Dunbar, Mathieu Bernard, Nicolas Hamilakis, Tu Anh Nguyen, Maureen de Seyssel, Patricia Roze, Morgane Riviere, Eugene Kharitonov, Emmanuel Dupoux
Summary: The Zero Resource Speech Challenge 2021 requires participants to learn a language model directly from audio without any text or labels. Evaluation metrics include representations at the acoustic, lexical, syntactic, and semantic levels. Eight systems were submitted from four groups, with some notable results.
Article
Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence
Kushal Lakhotia, Eugene Kharitonov, Wei-Ning Hsu, Yossi Adi, Adam Polyak, Benjamin Bolte, Tu-Anh Nguyen, Jade Copet, Alexei Baevski, Abdelrahman Mohamed, Emmanuel Dupoux
Summary: The study introduces Generative Spoken Language Modeling, which aims to learn the acoustic and linguistic characteristics of a language from raw audio without text or labels. The researchers set up baseline systems with a discrete speech encoder, a generative language model, and a speech decoder, trained without supervision, and validated their metrics with human evaluation. They found that the number of discrete units in the speech encoders and some combinations can approach text-based systems in certain ways.
TRANSACTIONS OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS
(2021)
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Bogdan Ludusan, Reiko Mazuka, Emmanuel Dupoux
Summary: The hypothesis that parents help infants learn phonetic categories by speaking to them in infant-directed speech (IDS) rather than adult-directed speech (ADS) has been tested using Japanese adult speech data. The separability and robustness of vowel category learning were examined, finding that hyperarticulated speech in read speech (RS) improved separability, while increased between-speaker variability in ADS enhanced robustness for some algorithms. However, these effects were not observed in IDS, leading to the discussion of the role of machine learning algorithms in testing hypotheses about the functional role of IDS.
