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Updated: Aug 10, 2026

fMRI Mapping of Brain Activity Associated with the Vocal Production of Consonant and Dissonant Intervals
Published on: May 23, 2017
Language-specific memory traces of consonants in the brain
Valerie L Shafer1, Richard G Schwartz, Diane Kurtzberg
1Program in Speech and Hearing Sciences, City University of New York, 365 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10016, USA. vshafer@gc.cuny.edu
Native language experience impacts speech sound processing. Hindi speakers show faster brain discrimination of speech sounds than English speakers, especially for complex sounds.
Area of Science:
- Linguistics
- Neuroscience
- Phonetics
Background:
- Native language shapes auditory perception of speech sounds.
- Place-of-articulation features are crucial for distinguishing consonants.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how native language experience influences the processing of place-of-articulation features.
- To compare behavioral and neural responses to speech sound contrasts between native Hindi and English speakers.
Main Methods:
- Experiment 1: Behavioral discrimination/identification and mismatch negativity (MMN) recording using synthesized Hindi stop consonants (bilabial, dental, retroflexed).
- Experiment 2: MMN recording with varying frequent stimuli to assess neural processing differences.
- Participants: Native English and Hindi speakers.
Main Results:
- Behavioral performance was similar across groups, but English speakers were slower in discrimination.
- All participants struggled more with dental/retroflexed sounds than bilabial sounds.
- MMN responses indicated faster neural discrimination for Hindi speakers, particularly for retroflexed sounds.
Conclusions:
- Hindi speakers utilize finer acoustic-phonetic details for speech sound processing, leading to more rapid neural discrimination.
- Discriminating between dental and retroflexed sounds is inherently more challenging than bilabial-dental contrasts for all speakers.
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