The long-term objective of this research is to develop a functional model of the neuroanatomy underlying the perception of speech prosody. The working hypothesis is that both hemispheres have attention-driven, task-dependent schemata for speech processing, and that those of the left hemisphere are responsible for linguistic information irrespective of acoustic cues, whereas those of the right hemisphere are prosody specific. To test this hypothesis, PET imaging techniques are employed to observe cerebral blood flow of the human brain in vivo while normal adult, Chinese-English bilinguals and English monolinguals perform perceptual judgments of natural and filtered Chinese and English speech stimuli.
Specific aims are to identify neuroanatomical regions involved with the perceptual processing of various aspects of speech prosody at the word- and sentence-level in Chinese and English. Experiment 1 focuses on perceptual processing of word-level Chinese tones. Experiments 2-4 focus on perceptual processing of functionally equivalent, sentence-level aspects of linguistic and affective prosody in both Chinese and English. Chinese, a tone language, allows for the exploration of aspects of speech prosody ranging from the word level to the sentence level of English, a non-tone language, and to distinguish neural circuitry shared in common across languages from those directly attributable to language experience. Bilingual (Chinese-English) and monolingual (English) subjects and two sets of functionally-equivalent language stimuli (Chinese; English) allow for a comparison of neural circuitry underlying perceptual processing of speech prosody in bilingual and monolingual brains.
| Gandour, Jackson T (2013) A functional deficit in the sensorimotor interface component as revealed by oral reading in Thai conduction aphasia. J Neurolinguistics 26:337-347 |
| Li, Xiaojian; Gandour, Jackson T; Talavage, Thomas et al. (2010) Hemispheric asymmetries in phonological processing of tones versus segmental units. Neuroreport 21:690-4 |
| Gandour, Jackson; Tong, Yunxia; Talavage, Thomas et al. (2007) Neural basis of first and second language processing of sentence-level linguistic prosody. Hum Brain Mapp 28:94-108 |
| Xu, Yisheng; Gandour, Jackson; Talavage, Thomas et al. (2006) Activation of the left planum temporale in pitch processing is shaped by language experience. Hum Brain Mapp 27:173-83 |
| Xu, Yisheng; Krishnan, Ananthanarayan; Gandour, Jackson T (2006) Specificity of experience-dependent pitch representation in the brainstem. Neuroreport 17:1601-5 |
| Tong, Yunxia; Gandour, Jackson; Talavage, Thomas et al. (2005) Neural circuitry underlying sentence-level linguistic prosody. Neuroimage 28:417-28 |
| Krishnan, Ananthanarayan; Xu, Yisheng; Gandour, Jackson et al. (2005) Encoding of pitch in the human brainstem is sensitive to language experience. Brain Res Cogn Brain Res 25:161-8 |
| Gandour, Jackson; Tong, Yunxia; Wong, Donald et al. (2004) Hemispheric roles in the perception of speech prosody. Neuroimage 23:344-57 |
| Li, Xiaojian; Wong, Donald; Gandour, Jack et al. (2004) Neural network for encoding immediate memory in phonological processing. Neuroreport 15:2459-62 |
| Krishnan, Ananthanarayan; Xu, Yisheng; Gandour, Jackson T et al. (2004) Human frequency-following response: representation of pitch contours in Chinese tones. Hear Res 189:1-12 |
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