Neural oscillations and speech processing at birth
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Updated: Jul 11, 2025

Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations
Published on: July 1, 2015
Maria Clemencia Ortiz-Barajas1, Ramón Guevara2, Judit Gervain1,3
1Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition Center, CNRS & Université Paris Cité, 45 rue des Saints-Pères, 75006 Paris, France.
Abstract:
Are neural oscillations biologically endowed building blocks of the neural architecture for speech processing from birth, or do they require experience to emerge? In adults, delta, theta, and low-gamma oscillations support the simultaneous processing of phrasal, syllabic, and phonemic units in the speech signal, respectively. Using electroencephalography to investigate neural oscillations in the newborn brain we reveal that delta and theta oscillations differ for rhythmically different languages, suggesting that these bands underlie newborns' universal ability to discriminate languages on the basis of rhythm. Additionally, higher theta activity during post-stimulus as compared to pre-stimulus rest suggests that stimulation after-effects are present from birth.
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