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Emergence of the cortical encoding of phonetic features in the first year of life

Author

Listed:
  • Giovanni M. Di Liberto

    (The University of Dublin
    The University of Dublin
    University of Cambridge)

  • Adam Attaheri

    (University of Cambridge)

  • Giorgia Cantisani

    (The University of Dublin
    École normale supérieure, PSL University, CNRS)

  • Richard B. Reilly

    (The University of Dublin
    The University of Dublin.
    The University of Dublin)

  • Áine Ní Choisdealbha

    (University of Cambridge)

  • Sinead Rocha

    (University of Cambridge)

  • Perrine Brusini

    (University of Cambridge)

  • Usha Goswami

    (University of Cambridge)

Abstract

Even prior to producing their first words, infants are developing a sophisticated speech processing system, with robust word recognition present by 4–6 months of age. These emergent linguistic skills, observed with behavioural investigations, are likely to rely on increasingly sophisticated neural underpinnings. The infant brain is known to robustly track the speech envelope, however previous cortical tracking studies were unable to demonstrate the presence of phonetic feature encoding. Here we utilise temporal response functions computed from electrophysiological responses to nursery rhymes to investigate the cortical encoding of phonetic features in a longitudinal cohort of infants when aged 4, 7 and 11 months, as well as adults. The analyses reveal an increasingly detailed and acoustically invariant phonetic encoding emerging over the first year of life, providing neurophysiological evidence that the pre-verbal human cortex learns phonetic categories. By contrast, we found no credible evidence for age-related increases in cortical tracking of the acoustic spectrogram.

Suggested Citation

  • Giovanni M. Di Liberto & Adam Attaheri & Giorgia Cantisani & Richard B. Reilly & Áine Ní Choisdealbha & Sinead Rocha & Perrine Brusini & Usha Goswami, 2023. "Emergence of the cortical encoding of phonetic features in the first year of life," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-11, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:14:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-023-43490-x
    DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-43490-x
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    2. Matthew K. Leonard & Maxime O. Baud & Matthias J. Sjerps & Edward F. Chang, 2016. "Perceptual restoration of masked speech in human cortex," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 7(1), pages 1-9, December.
    3. Victoria Leong & Usha Goswami, 2015. "Acoustic-Emergent Phonology in the Amplitude Envelope of Child-Directed Speech," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(12), pages 1-37, December.
    4. Menoua Keshishian & Serdar Akkol & Jose Herrero & Stephan Bickel & Ashesh D. Mehta & Nima Mesgarani, 2023. "Joint, distributed and hierarchically organized encoding of linguistic features in the human auditory cortex," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 7(5), pages 740-753, May.
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