TY - JOUR

T1 - Cortical thickness and surface area of left anterior temporal areas affects processing of phonological cues to morphosyntax

AU - Novén, Mikael

AU - Schremm, Andrea

AU - Horne, Merle

AU - Roll, Mikael

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2020

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

N2 - Lack of methods to experimentally assess the perceptual processing of sound features and allow one to measure differences in phonological proficiency has been a limitation for speech processing studies in native speakers. Tonal features associated with Swedish word-stems, word accents, which cue grammatical suffixes, constitute, however, such sound features that can be exploited to generate measures of reliance on morphosyntactically relevant phonological information during word processing. Specifically, there is a natural variance between native speakers in response time (RT) difference between phonologically valid and invalid word accent-suffix combinations that can be used to quantify perceptual phonological proficiency. This study uses ultra-high field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to investigate word accents as phonological cues to morphosyntactic meaning. The study adds to the understanding of the neural basis for both morphosyntactically relevant phonological cues by reporting correlations between differences in listeners’ RT for validly and invalidly cued suffixes and cortical thickness in left anterior and middle temporal gyrus, and the left anterior superior temporal sulcus as well as cortical surface area in the left middle and inferior temporal gyri. The cortical areas studied are known constituents of the ventral speech processing stream, necessary for word and phrase recognition.

AB - Lack of methods to experimentally assess the perceptual processing of sound features and allow one to measure differences in phonological proficiency has been a limitation for speech processing studies in native speakers. Tonal features associated with Swedish word-stems, word accents, which cue grammatical suffixes, constitute, however, such sound features that can be exploited to generate measures of reliance on morphosyntactically relevant phonological information during word processing. Specifically, there is a natural variance between native speakers in response time (RT) difference between phonologically valid and invalid word accent-suffix combinations that can be used to quantify perceptual phonological proficiency. This study uses ultra-high field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to investigate word accents as phonological cues to morphosyntactic meaning. The study adds to the understanding of the neural basis for both morphosyntactically relevant phonological cues by reporting correlations between differences in listeners’ RT for validly and invalidly cued suffixes and cortical thickness in left anterior and middle temporal gyrus, and the left anterior superior temporal sulcus as well as cortical surface area in the left middle and inferior temporal gyri. The cortical areas studied are known constituents of the ventral speech processing stream, necessary for word and phrase recognition.

KW - Cortical surface area

KW - Cortical thickness

KW - Morphology

KW - Prosody

KW - Speech processing

KW - Word accent

U2 - 10.1016/j.brainres.2020.147150

DO - 10.1016/j.brainres.2020.147150

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 33039411

AN - SCOPUS:85092419871

VL - 1750

JO - Brain Research

JF - Brain Research

SN - 0006-8993

M1 - 147150

ER -