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Central and Divided Visual Field Presentation of Emotional Images to Measure Hemispheric Differences in Motivated Attention

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Right-hemisphere auditory cortex is dominant for coding syllable patterns in speech.

Daniel A Abrams¹, Trent Nicol, Steven Zecker

¹Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Communication Sciences, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA. daabrams@northwestern.edu

The Journal of Neuroscience : the Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience

|April 11, 2008

Summary

The right hemisphere is dominant for processing the speech envelope, crucial for understanding syllable patterns. This finding challenges the traditional view of speech processing being solely a left-brain function.

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Auditory Neuroscience
Speech Processing

Background:

Cortical speech analysis traditionally attributed to left-hemisphere auditory areas.
A hypothesis suggests bilateral processing of acoustic signals based on temporal rates.
Previous studies show right-hemisphere dominance for slow (3-5 Hz) and left-hemisphere for rapid (20-50 Hz) non-speech acoustic features.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether right-hemisphere auditory cortex is dominant for coding slow temporal features in speech, specifically the speech envelope.
To test the hypothesis of bilateral acoustic processing in speech based on temporal rates.

Main Methods:

Analysis of cortical processing of the speech envelope.
Comparison of right and left auditory cortex accuracy and response magnitude in following speech envelope contours.
Examination of hemispheric asymmetries irrespective of ear of stimulation.

Main Results:

Strong right-hemisphere dominance observed for coding the speech envelope.
Right-hemisphere auditory cortex demonstrated 100% greater accuracy and 33% larger response magnitude in tracking the speech envelope compared to the left hemisphere.
Hemispheric asymmetries persisted regardless of the ear receiving auditory stimulation.

Conclusions:

The right hemisphere plays a significant role in speech processing, particularly in coding the speech envelope.
Results support the hypothesis that acoustic speech processing involves rate-specialized neurons in both hemispheres.
Auditory cortex decomposes speech signals into constituent temporal features based on neuronal specialization for different temporal rates.