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Updated: Jul 16, 2025
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Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations
Published on: July 1, 2015
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Age-related increases in right hemisphere support for prosodic processing in children
Kristen E Li1,2, Andrew Dimitrijevic1,3,4, Karen A Gordon2,4
1Department of Physiology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Scientific Reports
|September 22, 2023
Summary
This study reveals how children
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
- Linguistics
Background:
- Language comprehension relies on a complex brain network.
- Neural bases of prosodic processing are well-studied in adults, but less so in children.
- Prosodic processing is crucial for understanding speech nuances.
Purpose of the Study:
- To map brain regions involved in speech envelope tracking in children.
- To investigate age-related changes in prosodic processing networks.
- To establish a neurodevelopmental timeline for prosodic cue processing.
Main Methods:
- Magnetoencephalography (MEG) was used to measure brain activity.
- 80 typically developing children (ages 4-18) participated in a story listening task.
- Dynamic Imaging of Coherent Sources (DICS) localized neuromagnetic signals.
Main Results:
- Speech envelope coherence was observed in the bilateral perisylvian cortex.
- Age-related increases in coherence were found in the right superior temporal gyrus and auditory cortex.
- Age-related decreases in coherence were observed in the left superior temporal gyrus.
Conclusions:
- A developmental refinement of prosodic processing networks is indicated.
- Right hemisphere language areas show increasing specialization for prosody.
- Findings provide a reference for assessing speech and hearing disorders in children.
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