Neural phase angle from two months when tracking speech and non-speech rhythm linked to language performance from 12 to 24 months

Choisdealbha, Áine Ní; Attaheri, Adam; Rocha, Sinead; Mead, Natasha; Olawole-Scott, Helen; Brusini, Perrine; Gibbon, Samuel; Boutris, Panagiotis; Grey, Christina; Hines, Declan; Williams, Isabel; Flanagan, Sheila; Goswami, Usha

doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2023.105301

Cited by 11 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…Most importantly, the newborn’s ability to track the familiar rhyme (as measured with classical coherence) was positively correlated with the language development at 6 months of age, both with the receptive and expressive scores of the Bayley scales. Earlier studies indicated similar predictive value of cortical tracking (Menn, Ward, et al, 2022; Ní Choisdealbha et al, 2023). This shows how critical the development of non-invasive assessment methods for pre-verbal infants can be.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 63%

“…Another important outlook of the current study was to assess the predictive value of the cortical tracking abilities of newborns. As other studies reported that infant cortical tracking positively correlated with language development (Menn, Ward, et al, 2022; Ní Choisdealbha et al, 2023), we also measured the infants’ language development at 6 months of age using the Bayley scales (Macha & Petermann, 2015) and investigated the correlation with newborns’ cortical tracking ability.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Neural speech tracking in newborns: prenatal learning and contributing factors

Florea,

Reimann,

Schmidt

et al. 2024

Preprint

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IntroductionEarly language development in infants is being increasingly studied, though only recently with direct measurements of brain activity rather than with behavioral or physiological measurements. In the current study, we use electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings of 2-week-old infants to look for signs of prenatal learning and to investigate newborns’ abilities to process language. We also look at the influence of prenatal stress factors and at the predictive value of the newborns’ language processing abilities for later language development.MethodsSixty pregnant women played a rhyme to their abdomen twice a day from the 34thweek of pregnancy until birth, to familiarize the fetus with the rhyme. At around 2 weeks after delivery (mean age 16 days), the newborns were exposed to the familiar rhyme as well as to an unfamiliar one while their EEG was recorded. Additionally, three manipulations of the familiar rhyme were played: (1) low-pass filtered, (2) with changed rhythm, and (3) inverted and played backwards. The data was analyzed to see how well the infant brain signal followed the speech envelope in each condition.Accounting for the heterogenous approach used for neural speech tracking in the literature, we used four methods, namely: (1) coherence, (2) Hilbert coherence, (3) temporal response functions (TRF), and (4) mutual information (MI). The maternal prenatal depression was evaluated with Edinburgh Prenatal Depression Score and the chronic fetal stress was measured from the hair cortisol levels of the 2 week-olds. The language development at 6 months of age was evaluated with the Bayley Scales.Results and discussionOverall, the results indicate the presence of prenatal learning, with the unfamiliar rhyme eliciting stronger cortical tracking (higher coherence and MI) than the familiar rhyme, which suggests stronger brain-to-speech coupling for the unfamiliar rhyme, perhaps deriving from more effort to process the unexpected stimulus. However, the original version of the familiar rhyme proved to be the easiest to track compared to the language- and rhythm-manipulations, (higher MI for the original rhyme than the language manipulation and higher coherence and mTRF correlation coefficients for the original rhyme than the rhythm manipulation). This indicates language discrimination and a prosodic-based learning of the familiar rhyme. Furthermore, there is an indication of phonotactic sensitivity at this young age, with less tracking (lower Hilbert coherence and lower mTRF correlation coefficients) of the low-pass filtered rhyme than the original version, indicating that the phonological cues erased by the filtering were important for the newborn’s ability to follow the rhyme.Furthermore, the mothers’ depression scores positively correlated with the infant’s tracking ability for the familiar rhyme. This suggests that a slightly lower mood was more stimulative for the fetal language development. The chronic fetal stress levels, however, were negatively correlated with the cortical tracking abilities. Importantly, the newborn’s cortical tracking was positively correlated with the infant’s language development at 6 months of age, underlining the predictive value of the early assessment of language processing.ConclusionPrenatal learning is well established, but evidence including (healthy) brain data in the first weeks of life is scarce. The current study shows that newborns can discriminate between a familiar and unfamiliar rhyme, while also highlighting the role of prosody in early language processing, and bringing new evidence of their sensitivity to phonotactic cues in auditory stimuli. Furthermore, the newborn’s ability to track a rhyme is correlated with their language development at 6 months. The newborn’s cortical tracking of the familiar rhyme is further increased by moderately low maternal mood, but decreased by fetal stress. Future studies with similar fine-grained linguistic designs but of older infants should teach us the timeline of what exactly is learned prenatally and at very early age in respect to language.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 63%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural speech tracking in newborns: prenatal learning and contributing factors

Florea,

Reimann,

Schmidt

et al. 2024

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Given that missing cases vary across the multiple tasks, and that the multivariate models employed use listwise deletion, additional follow-up univariate models for each of the predictors were run separately, to utilise the breadth of data collected and maximise statistical power. This approach was applied across multiple BabyRhythm studies using different neural measures as language predictors (see (50), using phase measures, and (51), which uses neural responses to visual-only speech), accordingly an alpha threshold of 0.05 was applied. As the follow-up univariate analyses required multiple comparisons, one per language measure, they were Bonferroni-corrected for the number of language measures in the group (i.e.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infant low-frequency EEG cortical power, cortical tracking and phase-amplitude coupling predicts language a year later.

Attaheri

Choisdealbha

Rocha

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Cortical signals have been shown to track acoustic and linguistic properties of continual speech. This phenomenon has been measured across the lifespan, reflecting speech understanding as well as cognitive functions such as attention and prediction. Furthermore, atypical low-frequency cortical tracking of speech is found in children with phonological difficulties (developmental dyslexia). Accordingly, low-frequency cortical signals, especially in the delta and theta ranges, may play a critical role in language acquisition. A recent investigation Attaheri et al., 2022 (1) probed cortical tracking mechanisms in infants aged 4, 7 and 11 months as they listened to sung speech. Results from temporal response functions (TRF), phase-amplitude coupling (PAC) and dynamic theta-delta power (PSD) analyses indicated speech envelope tracking and stimulus related power (PSD) via the delta & theta neural signals. Furthermore, delta and theta driven PAC was found at all ages with gamma amplitudes displaying a stronger PAC to low frequency phases than beta. The present study tests whether those previous findings replicate in the second half of the same cohort (first half: N=61, (1); second half: N=61). In addition to demonstrating good replication, we investigate whether cortical tracking in the first year of life predicts later language acquisition for the full infant cohort (122 infants recruited, 113, retained). Increased delta cortical tracking and theta-gamma PAC were related to better language outcomes using both infant-led and parent-estimated measures. By contrast, increased ~4Hz PSD power and a greater theta/delta power ratio related to decreased parent-estimated language outcomes. The data are interpreted within a "Temporal Sampling" framework for developmental language trajectories.

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“…In the Cambridge UK BabyRhythm project, 120 infants were followed longitudinally from the age of 2 months, and EEG was recorded while the infants listened to either sung speech (nursery rhymes), to the rhythmic syllable repetition task, or to a matched drumbeat (nonspeech) rhythmic repetition task (Attaheri et al, 2022a,b; Ni Choisdealbha et al, 2022, 2023; Keshavarzi et al, 2023). In the syllable repetition task, infants showed evidence for a group preferred phase as early as 2 months of age, and by 6 months individual phase consistency was present over both left- and right-temporal regions as well as over parietal-occipital regions (Ni Choisdealbha et al, 2023). Individual phase angles predicted language acquisition at 18 months as measured by an infant-led vocabulary task (in this task, the infant selects one of two pictures that matches a spoken word, Ni Choisdealbha et al, 2023).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the syllable repetition task, infants showed evidence for a group preferred phase as early as 2 months of age, and by 6 months individual phase consistency was present over both left- and right-temporal regions as well as over parietal-occipital regions (Ni Choisdealbha et al, 2023). Individual phase angles predicted language acquisition at 18 months as measured by an infant-led vocabulary task (in this task, the infant selects one of two pictures that matches a spoken word, Ni Choisdealbha et al, 2023). In the rhythmic drumbeat (nonspeech) task, neural phase angle at 9 months predicted nonword repetition at 24 months, a phonological measure (Ni Choisdealbha et al, 2023).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural processing of rhythmic speech by children with developmental language disorder (DLD): An EEG study

Keshavarzi,

Richards,

Feltham

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Sensitivity to rhythmic and prosodic cues in speech has been described as a precursor of language acquisition. Consequently, atypical rhythmic processing during infancy and early childhood has been considered a risk factor for developmental language disorders. This is the ‘atypical rhythm risk’ (ARR) hypothesis. The neural processing of rhythmic speech has not yet been explored in children with developmental language disorder (DLD). Here we utilise EEG and a rhythmic speech paradigm previously utilised for dyslexia to investigate the ARR hypothesis in 9-year-old children with and without DLD. We investigate angular velocity, power, ERPs, phase-amplitude coupling (PAC) and phase-phase coupling (PPC), at three frequency bands, delta, theta and low gamma. Both groups demonstrated significant and equivalent phase entrainment in the delta and theta bands, but only the control children showed significant phase entrainment in the low gamma band. Further, while angular velocity in the delta and theta bands was equivalent by group, there was a significant gamma-band difference. The children with DLD also exhibited significantly more theta and gamma power compared to the control children. Regarding PAC and PPC, both groups showed significant and equivalent coupling strength. However, group resultant phase differences showed that low-frequency phase (delta and theta) affected gamma oscillations differently by group. The EEG data show important differences between children with and without DLD in the neural mechanisms underpinning the processing of rhythmic speech. The findings are discussed in terms of auditory theories of DLD.

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Neural phase angle from two months when tracking speech and non-speech rhythm linked to language performance from 12 to 24 months

Cited by 11 publications

References 56 publications

Neural speech tracking in newborns: prenatal learning and contributing factors

Neural speech tracking in newborns: prenatal learning and contributing factors

Infant low-frequency EEG cortical power, cortical tracking and phase-amplitude coupling predicts language a year later.

Neural processing of rhythmic speech by children with developmental language disorder (DLD): An EEG study

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