Neurobiological Basis of Speech: A Case for the Preeminence of Temporal Processing

Tallal, Paula; Miller, Stuart S.; Fitch, R. Holly

doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.1993.tb22957.x

Cited by 752 publications

(283 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Even disregarding any relevance to dyslexia per se, this is one of a few studies reporting strong correlations between individual differences in brain and behavior (42)(43)(44)(45)(46)(47) Our results are consistent with an M pathway deficit in dyslexia. This M pathway deficit may be only a marker for a more general deficit in fast temporal processing and have no direct causal relationship with reading difficulty (48). It is difficult, however, to imagine that an abnormality in such a significant visual pathway would fail to have consequences for complex visual behaviors, like reading.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Brain activity in visual cortex predicts individual differences in reading performance

Demb

Boynton

Heeger

1997

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

167

100

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The relationship between brain activity and reading performance was examined to test the hypothesis that dyslexia involves a deficit in a specific visual pathway known as the magnocellular (M) pathway. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to measure brain activity in dyslexic and control subjects in conditions designed to preferentially stimulate the M pathway. Dyslexics showed reduced activity compared with controls both in the primary visual cortex and in a secondary cortical visual area (MT؉) that is believed to receive a strong M pathway input. Most importantly, significant correlations were found between individual differences in reading rate and brain activity. These results support the hypothesis for an M pathway abnormality in dyslexia and imply a strong relationship between the integrity of the M pathway and reading ability.Developmental dyslexia can be defined as an unexpectedly low reading ability given an individual's intelligence quotient that cannot be explained by other factors such as motivation, learning opportunity, sensory acuity, or brain injury. Estimates of dyslexia's prevalence range from 3 to 9% (1, 2). The etiology of dyslexia as well as specific sensory deficits in dyslexia remain controversial.A particularly controversial issue is whether dyslexia involves a visual deficit. One subdivision of the visual system, known as the magnocellular (M) pathway, begins at the level of the ganglion cells in the retina, projects through the M layers of the lateral geniculate nucleus, and terminates in the primary visual cortex (V1) (3, 4). There are several lines of evidence for an M pathway deficit in dyslexia, including abnormally small cells in the M layers of the LGN (5), impaired perceptual performance (6-11), and reduced electrophysiological responses (5, 12-14) to stimuli processed mainly by the M pathway. Furthermore, a recent functional MRI (fMRI) study (15) reported that dyslexics showed essentially no significant activity in a cortical visual area (MTϩ that consists of area MT along with adjacent motion sensitive areas) that is believed to receive a strong M pathway input. Several perceptual and electrophysiological studies have, however, failed to find evidence for an M pathway deficit (16)(17)(18)(19)(20).Our study was designed to test two predictions of the M deficit hypothesis. First, the degree of the M pathway deficit should be strongly correlated with the severity of reading difficulty. Second, it should be possible to demonstrate physiological differences at least as early as V1. MATERIALS AND METHODSBlood oxygenation level-dependent fMRI (21-23; for review, see ref. 24) was used to measure brain activity in five dyslexic and five control subjects. Each subject participated in several scanning sessions: one to obtain a standard, high resolution, anatomical scan, one to define the early visual areas including V1, and at least three more sessions to measure fMRI response amplitude as a function of stimulus contrast (contrast is defined as the maximum minus the mini...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Brain activity in visual cortex predicts individual differences in reading performance

Demb

Boynton

Heeger

1997

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

167

100

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Among the earliest to argue in favour of this idea were researchers working with aphasic populations, who noted associations between aphasia and temporal judgement deficits (Efron 1963;Swisher & Hirsh 1972;Phillips & Farmer 1990; von Steinbü chel 1998), and from research on children with specific language impairment, who seem to demonstrate global temporal processing deficits (Tallal et al 1993(Tallal et al , 1996. A similar conclusion regarding the perceptual deficits of patients with pure word deafness was reached by Phillips & Farmer (1990), who commented that the critical problem in these patients relates to a deficit in processing of sounds with temporal content in the milliseconds to tens of milliseconds range.…”

Section: Evidence That Simple Acoustic Features Of Sounds Can Explainmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural specializations for speech and pitch: moving beyond the dichotomies

Zatorre¹,

Gandour

2007

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

336

262

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The idea that speech processing relies on unique, encapsulated, domain-specific mechanisms has been around for some time. Another well-known idea, often espoused as being in opposition to the first proposal, is that processing of speech sounds entails general-purpose neural mechanisms sensitive to the acoustic features that are present in speech. Here, we suggest that these dichotomous views need not be mutually exclusive. Specifically, there is now extensive evidence that spectral and temporal acoustical properties predict the relative specialization of right and left auditory cortices, and that this is a parsimonious way to account not only for the processing of speech sounds, but also for non-speech sounds such as musical tones. We also point out that there is equally compelling evidence that neural responses elicited by speech sounds can differ depending on more abstract, linguistically relevant properties of a stimulus (such as whether it forms part of one's language or not). Tonal languages provide a particularly valuable window to understand the interplay between these processes. The key to reconciling these phenomena probably lies in understanding the interactions between afferent pathways that carry stimulus information, with top-down processing mechanisms that modulate these processes. Although we are still far from the point of having a complete picture, we argue that moving forward will require us to abandon the dichotomy argument in favour of a more integrated approach.

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“…The specific scientific literature shows that children with speech disorders often present deficits in speech perception and phonological awareness development, despite the fact that they present receptive language skills higher than the expected for their age (7) . These deficits can affect the proper identification of the sound characteristics of phonemes (8) , impairing the construction of the correct knowledge of the phoneme-grapheme association and, consequently, affecting decoding and reading fluency with regards to accuracy and reading rate (9) . Adequate grapheme-phoneme conversion allows the reading of any regular word.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interferência do transtorno fonológico na leitura de itens com diferentes características psicolinguísticas

Bueno

Rossi

Appezzato

et al. 2017

Audiol., Commun. Res.

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Introduction: Speech disorders may impair the construction of phonemegrapheme association and affect decoding and reading fluency. Purpose: To describe the performance profiles of schoolchildren diagnosed with reading disorder (RD) and with reading disorder associated with phonological disorder (PD) in the task of reading of isolated items according to the psycholinguistic characteristics of such items. Methods: The medical records of 36 schoolchildren enrolled at the 4 th and 5 th grades of elementary school were analyzed as follows: 18 children with RD were paired with other 18 children with typical development according to age, schooling, and gender. The study sample was divided into four groups: Study Group 1 (SG1), composed of 10 schoolchildren with RD; Study Group 2 (SG2), comprising eight schoolchildren with RD and PD; Control Group paired with SG1 (CG1); and CG paired with SG2 (CG2). The reading of words and pseudo words was compared with respect to orthographic regularity, frequency, and extension. The data were statistically analyzed. Results: Lower values of rate and accuracy were observed in the study groups compared with those of the control groups, except for the rate of pseudo words in SG2. The study groups showed lower statistical results than the control groups for all regularity variables, except for irregular words. SG1 and CG1 presented similar performance in the reading of monosyllabic and polysyllabic words. Regarding trisyllabic and dissyllable words, significantly lower mean values were found in SG1 compared with those of CG1; however, SG2 showed significantly lower performance regardless of item extension. Performance of the study groups with respect to item familiarity was significantly lower for all variables, except for high frequency. Conclusion: Children with RD present good use of the lexical route and difficulty with the phonological route. Phonological speech disorder impairs the performance of schoolchildren on both reading routes.

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Neurobiological Basis of Speech: A Case for the Preeminence of Temporal Processing

Cited by 752 publications

References 38 publications

Brain activity in visual cortex predicts individual differences in reading performance

Brain activity in visual cortex predicts individual differences in reading performance

Neural specializations for speech and pitch: moving beyond the dichotomies

Interferência do transtorno fonológico na leitura de itens com diferentes características psicolinguísticas

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