Brain electric activity during the preattentive perception of speech sounds in tonal languages

Abstract

The present study was intended to make electrophysiological investigations into the preattentive perception of native and non-native speech sounds. We recorded the mismatch negativity, elicited by single syllable change of both native and non-native speech-sound contrasts in tonal languages. EEGs were recorded and low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (LORETA) was utilized to explore the neural electrical activity. Our results suggested that the left hemisphere was predominant in the perception of native speech sounds, whereas the non-native speech sound was perceived predominantly by the right hemisphere, which may be explained by the specialization in processing the prosodic and emotional components of speech formed in this hemisphere.

Keywords

• speech
• sound
• auditory
• cortex
• perception
• asymmetry
• evoked field
• low resolution electromagnetic tomography (LORETA)
• mismatch negativity (MMN)