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Updated: Jul 5, 2026
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Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations
Published on: July 1, 2015
Developmental changes in brain regions involved in phonological and orthographic processing during spoken language
Nadia E Cone1, Douglas D Burman, Tali Bitan
1Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA. n-cone@northwestern.edu
Neuroimage
|April 17, 2008
Summary
Brain scans reveal how children
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Understanding the neural basis of language processing in developing brains is crucial.
- Previous research has explored auditory processing but less is known about developmental changes in rhyme detection.
- Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) offers a non-invasive method to study brain activity during cognitive tasks.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate developmental changes in brain activation patterns in children aged 9-15 during an auditory rhyme decision task.
- To identify specific brain regions involved in processing spoken rhymes and non-rhymes.
- To examine how age influences the engagement of semantic, phonological, and orthographic processing during auditory tasks.
Main Methods:
- Utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity in 9- to 15-year-old children.
- Participants performed an auditory rhyme decision task involving spoken words.
- Analyzed brain activation in response to rhyming, non-rhyming, conflicting, and non-conflicting word pairs.
Main Results:
- Children showed activation in temporal, frontal, and fusiform gyri.
- Increased activation in the left middle temporal gyrus with age suggests growing automatic semantic processing.
- Developmental increases in left inferior frontal gyrus activation for conflicting non-rhymes indicate enhanced strategic phonological processing.
- Left inferior temporal/fusiform gyrus activation was higher for conflicting pairs, with age-related increases in the link between reaction time and visual-orthographic processing.
Conclusions:
- Auditory rhyme decision tasks engage semantic, phonological, and orthographic processing in children's brains.
- Automatic orthographic processing occurs even when not explicitly required, particularly when phonological representations conflict.
- Age-related increases in specific brain regions highlight the developing nature of strategic phonological and visual-orthographic processing during language tasks.
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