Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 10, 2026

fMRI Mapping of Brain Activity Associated with the Vocal Production of Consonant and Dissonant Intervals
Published on: May 23, 2017
Hemispheric asymmetries in the processing of temporal acoustic cues in consonant-vowel syllables
Pascale Sandmann1, Tom Eichele, Karsten Specht
1Department of Biological and Medical Psychology, University of Bergen, Norway. p.sandmann@psychologie.unizh.ch
Purpose:
In order to examine auditory lateralization of prelexical speech processing, a dichotic listening task was performed with concurrent EEG measurement.
Methods:
Subjects were tested with dichotic pairs of six consonant-vowel (CV) syllables that initially started with a voiced (/ba/, /da/, /ga/) or a voiceless stop consonant (/pa/, /ta/, /ka/). Electrophysiological correlates were analyzed by a low resolution electromagnetic tomography (LORETA) approach to estimate the sources of N1 event-related potentials (ERP) in the 3D brain.
Results:
Behavioral and electrophysiological measures revealed different ear advantages and ERP amplitude measures for voiced and voiceless syllables. Fronto-central N1 amplitudes were larger for syllables with voiced than voiceless initial consonants. LORETA source estimates revealed a lateralization effect, with stronger leftward lateralization for voiced than voiceless CV syllables.
Conclusions:
The present study demonstrates that auditory lateralization is affected by temporal cues in CV syllables. The lateralization effect suggests that functional hemispheric differences exist at an early prelexical level of speech processing.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
Lateralization
Cerebral Hemispheres
The Cochlea
Perceiving Loudness, Pitch, and Location
Place theory, or place coding, suggests that different pitches are heard because various sound waves activate specific locations along the cochlea's basilar membrane. The brain determines the pitch of a sound by identifying...
Auditory Perception
Hearing

