Language-specific phoneme representations revealed by electric and magnetic brain responses

Risto Näätänen, Anne Lehtokoski, Mietta Lennes, Marie Cheour, Minna Huotilainen, Antti Iivonen, Martti Vainio, Paavo Alku, Risto J. Ilmoniemi, Aavo Luuk, Jüri Allik, Janne Sinkkonen and Kimmo Alho
Additional contact information
Risto Näätänen: University of Helsinki
Anne Lehtokoski: University of Helsinki
Mietta Lennes: University of Helsinki
Marie Cheour: University of Helsinki
Minna Huotilainen: University of Helsinki
Antti Iivonen: University of Helsinki
Martti Vainio: University of Helsinki
Paavo Alku: University of Turku
Risto J. Ilmoniemi: Helsinki University Central Hospital
Aavo Luuk: University of Tartu
Jüri Allik: University of Tartu
Janne Sinkkonen: University of Helsinki
Kimmo Alho: University of Helsinki

Nature, 1997, vol. 385, issue 6615, 432-434

Abstract: Abstract There is considerable debate about whether the early processing of sounds depends on whether they form part of speech. Proponents of such speech specificity postulate the existence of language-dependent memory traces, which are activated in the processing of speech1–3 but not when equally complex, acoustic non-speech stimuli are processed. Here we report the existence of these traces in the human brain. We presented to Finnish subjects the Finnish phoneme prototype /e/ as the frequent stimulus, and other Finnish phoneme prototypes or a non-prototype (the Estonian prototype /õ/) as the infrequent stimulus. We found that the brain's automatic change-detection response, reflected electrically as the mismatch negativity (MMN)4–10, was enhanced when the infrequent, deviant stimulus was a prototype (the Finnish /ö/) relative to when it was a non-prototype (the Estonian /õ/). These phonemic traces, revealed by MMN, are language-specific, as /õ/ caused enhancement of MMN in Estonians. Whole-head magnetic recordings11,12 located the source of this native-language, phoneme-related response enhancement, and thus the language-specific memory traces, in the auditory cortex of the left hemisphere.

Date: 1997
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/385432a0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:385:y:1997:i:6615:d:10.1038_385432a0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/385432a0

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().