By the sound of it : an ERP investigation of human action sound processing in 7-month-old infants

Geangu, Elena and Quadrelli, Ermanno and Lewis, James W. and Cassia, Viola Macchi and Turati, Chiara (2015) By the sound of it : an ERP investigation of human action sound processing in 7-month-old infants. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 12. pp. 134-144. ISSN 1878-9293

[thumbnail of 1-s2.0-S1878929315000195-main]
Preview
PDF (1-s2.0-S1878929315000195-main)
1_s2.0_S1878929315000195_main.pdf - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs.

Download (1MB)

Abstract

Recent evidence suggests that human adults perceive human action sounds as a distinct category from human vocalizations, environmental, and mechanical sounds, activating different neural networks (Engel et al., 2009 and Lewis et al., 2011). Yet, little is known about the development of such specialization. Using event-related potentials (ERP), this study investigated neural correlates of 7-month-olds’ processing of human action (HA) sounds in comparison to human vocalizations (HV), environmental (ENV), and mechanical (MEC) sounds. Relative to the other categories, HA sounds led to increased positive amplitudes between 470 and 570 ms post-stimulus onset at left anterior temporal locations, while HV led to increased negative amplitudes at the more posterior temporal locations in both hemispheres. Collectively, human produced sounds (HA + HV) led to significantly different response profiles compared to non-living sound sources (ENV + MEC) at parietal and frontal locations in both hemispheres. Overall, by 7 months of age human action sounds are being differentially processed in the brain, consistent with a dichotomy for processing living versus non-living things. This provides novel evidence regarding the typical categorical processing of socially relevant sounds.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
Additional Information:
© 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/2800/2805
Subjects:
?? human soundsinfancyhuman vocalizationscerebral specializationneurodevelopmentcategorical perceptioncognitive neuroscience ??
ID Code:
73235
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
10 Mar 2015 15:30
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
14 Sep 2024 00:16