Meaningless Syllables Research Articles

One-to-One or One Too Many? Linking Sound-to-Letter Mappings to Speech Sound Perception and Production in Early Readers.

Effects related to literacy acquisition have been observed at different levels of speech processing. This study investigated the link between orthographic knowledge and children's perception and production of specific speech sounds. Sixty Spanish-speaking second graders, differing in their phonological decoding skills, completed a speech perception and a production task. In the perception task, a behavioral adaptation of the oddball paradigm was used. Children had to detect orthographically consistent /t/, which has a unique orthographic representation (〈t〉), and inconsistent /k/, which maps onto three different graphemes (〈c〉, 〈qu〉, and 〈k〉), both appearing infrequently within a repetitive auditory sequence. In the production task, children produced these same sounds in meaningless syllables. Perception results show that all children were faster at detecting consistent than inconsistent sounds regardless of their decoding skills. In the production task, however, the same facilitation for consistent sounds was linked to better decoding skills. These findings demonstrate differences in speech sound processing related to literacy acquisition. Literacy acquisition may therefore affect already-formed speech sound representations. Crucially, the strength of this link in production is modulated by individual decoding skills.

Neurophysiological status of patients with non-valvular atrial fibrillation

Abstract Funding Acknowledgements Type of funding sources: None. The reduction of the risk of stroke in patients with AF is achieved with the help of continuous administration of oral anticoagulants (OAC). The presence of cognitive impairment in a patient may be a significant risk factor for low adherence to antithrombotic therapy, therefore, the medico-social significance of impaired cognitive functions in patients with AF is high. At the same time, it is still unclear which neurophysiological mechanisms and areas of the brain are responsible for the development of cognitive disorders in this pathology. Thus, further studies are needed to assess the state of higher cortical functions in patients with AF. Materials and methods The study included 50 patients with nonvalvular AF and a high risk of hemorrhagic and ischemic events, with a risk of thromboembolic complications on the CHA2DS2-VASc scale of at least 2 points and a risk of bleeding on the HAS-BLED scale of at least 3 points. The control group consisted of 17 relatively healthy individuals. Research results The analysis of indicators of extended neuropsychological testing made it possible to establish that, compared with healthy individuals of the same age, patients with AF perform worse on tests of neurodynamics, attention and short-term memory, Table. Patients with AF have a lower rate of complex sensorimotor reactions, a greater number of errors, especially in tests with biofeedback (brain performance test). Also, patients with AF have worse performance indicators and higher focused attention depletion (characterized by the number of characters processed in the 1st and 4th minutes of the proofreading test, respectively). As for the indicators of short-term memory, healthy subjects were superior to patients with AF in memorizing meaningless syllables and words, but not numbers. The power indicators of the theta EEG rhythms at rest with eyes closed were taken. The factors were identified - GROUP (2 levels: patients with AF; healthy individuals), AREA (5 levels: (frontal, central, temporal, parietal, occipital) and LATERALITY (2 levels: left, right hemisphere). In patients with cardiac arrhythmias, the increase in the power of the theta-2 rhythm biopotentials in the direction from the anterior to the posterior cortex is significantly pronounced (p = 0.000001), while in healthy individuals the gradient curve is flatter (p = 0.009). Conclusions It was found that about half of the examined AF patients have syndrome mild cognitive impairment (MCI). The most significant cognitive decline in these patients compared with relatively healthy individuals was noted for the speed of sensorimotor response, performance control indicators, and short-term memory, while decreased cognitive test scores were associated with a greater representation of slow waves in the resting EEG, mainly in the posterior regions of the cerebral cortex.

Toward new memory sciences: The Programme 13-Novembre.

Studies devoted to individual and collective memory have evolved in a compartmentalized way for more than a century. We recall the most emblematic historical works of two distinct visions of memory: those of the experimental psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus who measured memory, on himself, from lists of meaningless syllables, and those of the sociologist Maurice Halbwachs for whom any act of memory is a social act. Since the beginning of the years 2000, the social turn in life sciences and, more rarely, the opening up of sociologists and historians to the life sciences have tended to bring these hitherto compartmentalized currents together. The Programme 13-Novembre has seized upon a diversity of research tools on memory by applying them to a traumatic event in French society: the attacks of 13 November 2015 in Paris and its immediate suburbs. The main objective of this program is to better understand the links between individual and collective memory in the construction of these memories related to this traumatic event. This research is fundamentally transdisciplinary-i.e., developed by researchers from different disciplines-and longitudinal over 12 years to understand the evolution of memories over time. Our studies focus on people who were closest to the traumatic event-and likely to develop posttraumatic stress disorder-and on those who were further away but who are more representative of the general population. We present some of the results, derived from data collected in studies of the program that feed our advocacy for new memory sciences.

The Illusion of Progress in Students’ Fluency - A Longitudinal Study of Students’ Monologic Speech over an Academic Year

This paper takes on the issue of student’s monologic speech, examining differences in fluency, production over levels of proficiency (as represented by TOEIC scores), as well as how this speech improves over an academic year. The data, which is based on the speech of 12 participants, was taken from the corpus Monologic and Dialogic Corpus 2019 has 20,368 words, and 42 subjects, whereas the second corpus Monologic and Dialogic Corpus 2020 has 16,997 words and 29 participants. Research questions focused on describing the speech in monologues of higher and lower proficiency Japanese EFL learners in regards to the fluency variables of speaking time, articulation rate, mean length runs (MLRs), number of words and percentage of silence, as well as investigating how acoustic, lexical and syntactical dysfluency might change over the year. Results showed that the mean time of monologue speech was higher in the high-proficiency group than in the low proficiency group in 2019 and 2020, but this difference was not statistically significant. In the high-proficiency group there was a significant difference between 2019 and 2020 in meaningless syllables whereas all the other acoustic, lexical, and syntactical dysfluency variables showed no significant difference over the academic year 2019/2020. Further research will be conducted on how direct feedback might impact students’ output.

The dynamic connectome of speech control.

Speech production relies on the orchestrated control of multiple brain regions. The specific, directional influences within these networks remain poorly understood. We used regression dynamic causal modelling to infer the whole-brain directed (effective) connectivity from functional magnetic resonance imaging data of 36 healthy individuals during the production of meaningful English sentences and meaningless syllables. We identified that the two dynamic connectomes have distinct architectures that are dependent on the complexity of task production. The speech was regulated by a dynamic neural network, the most influential nodes of which were centred around superior and inferior parietal areas and influenced the whole-brain network activity via long-ranging coupling with primary sensorimotor, prefrontal, temporal and insular regions. By contrast, syllable production was controlled by a more compressed, cost-efficient network structure, involving sensorimotor cortico-subcortical integration via superior parietal and cerebellar network hubs. These data demonstrate the mechanisms by which the neural network reorganizes the connectivity of its influential regions, from supporting the fundamental aspects of simple syllabic vocal motor output to multimodal information processing of speech motor output. This article is part of the theme issue 'Vocal learning in animals and humans'.

Psychophysiological changes during workspace virtualization

Aim. To estimate psychophysiological changes during workspace virtualization.Materials and Methods. We evaluated the psychophysiological profile of 10 healthy right-handed males aged 25 to 45 years before, during and after the working in a virtual reality (VR) headset. All participants had higher education, normal or corrected to normal vision, and were experienced computer users. Psychometric testing included a neurological examination, assessment of functional and feedback-related brain activity (reaction time, errors, and missed signals) and attention span, quantification of processed symbols in the 1st and 4th minutes of Bourdon test, analysis of short-term memory (10 words, 10 numbers and 10 meaningless syllables memorization) and spatial perception, and multi-channel electroencephalography recording in rest.Results. Deterioration of psychometric indicators after a cognitive load in a VR headset was documented only in the most difficult tasks: the number of errors increased by 93% in the brain performance test and by 65% in the attention distribution test. The analysis of electroencephalography data showed that the delta rhythm and theta1 rhythm activity decreased by 28 and 13%, respectively, after working in a VR headset as compared to baseline values, while alpha1 rhythm activity increased by 96%. Probably, the observed electroencephalography changes corresponded to the patterns of brain activation associated with cognitive load and the resulting fatigue.Conclusions. We developed a suitable approach for the psychometric testing before and after working in VR headset, which demonstrated general tolerance and acceptable subjective difficulties to VR load.

Neurophysiological status of patients with non-valve atrial fibrillation

Aim. To evaluate the neuropsychological parameters from the main cognitive domains (neurodynamic functions, attention and short-term memory) and the brain electrical activity in patients with non-valve atrial fibrillation (AF).Methods. 21 patients with the mean age of 61 [56; 67] years with non-valve AF who were admitted to the Department of Interventional Diagnosis and Treatment at the Research Institute for Complex Issues of Cardiovascular Disease were included in the study. The control group consisted of 17 healthy individuals with the mean age of 55 [49; 62] years. All patients underwent neuropsychological screening and computerized testing of neurodynamic functions, attention and short-term memory along with electroencephalographic studies. Statistical analysis was performed using the STATISTICA 10.0 software package.Results. Mild cognitive impairment was observed in 43% of patients with non-valve AF accompanied by ischemic brain matter changes according to the findings of magnetic resonance imaging. Patients with AF had slower complex sensorimotor reaction, more errors, worse directed attention, memorization of words and meaningless syllables in comparison with healthy individuals. In addition, patients with AF and healthy subjects had differences in the fronto-occipital gradient of theta-2 rhythm. The worst neurodynamic parameters were associated with a greater power of theta rhythms predominantly in the posterior parts of the brain only in patients with AF.Conclusion. Patients with non-valve AF had cognitive deficit with impaired executive control, attention and short-term memory as well as the slowing of cortical electrical activity in comparison to healthy individuals. The data obtained in our study are beneficial for developing an individual approach to prevent the development and progression of cognitive impairment in patients with AF.

The Twenty‐First Century

56 | Jacob Eigen In those days, Japanese restaurants placed tanks of fake, magnetic fish in their vestibules. We would sit at the counter saying I love so-­ a nd-­ s o but live with so-­ a nd-­ s o-­ s omeone-­ e lse, and the waiter folding napkins at the corner table would look up from his work and say: if you please, see the fish—the way they approach one side of the tank and then the other, turning and turning in a way that makes us feel they’re alive. But he would say this in Japanese, which at that time we heard as a sequence of meaningless syllables. Because it would be many years until the distinction between all languages was erased. And for us, many bowls of clouded broth. The Twenty-­ F irst Century Jacob Eigen poetry ...

What makes second language perception of Mandarin tones hard?

AbstractMandarin Chinese tones are known to be difficult for second language learners. A large body of research has examined non-native perception of tones, and may provide useful and interesting insights about the sources of tone learning difficulty for Chinese teachers and learners. However, much of the literature is in journals that may be difficult to access or written in technical language that may be hard for non-specialists to understand. This review article aims to summarize key findings from this research in an accessible fashion. I will draw on the research to answer five broad questions: (1) Why are tones more difficult for some learners than others? (2) Why are some tones more difficult than others? (3) Why are tones in words more difficult than in meaningless syllables? (4) Why are tones in context more difficult than in isolation? (5) What can we do about tone learning difficulties?

The Role of Low-frequency Neural Oscillations in Speech Processing: Revisiting Delta Entrainment.

Studies that use measures of cerebro-acoustic coherence have shown that theta oscillations (3-10 Hz) entrain to syllable-size modulations in the energy envelope of speech. This entrainment creates sensory windows in processing acoustic cues. Recent reports submit that delta oscillations (<3 Hz) can be entrained by nonsensory content units like phrases and serve to process meaning-though such views face fundamental problems. Other studies suggest that delta underlies a sensory chunking linked to the processing of sequential attributes of speech sounds. This chunking associated with the "focus of attention" is commonly manifested by the temporal grouping of items in sequence recall. Similar grouping in speech may entrain delta. We investigate this view by examining how low-frequency oscillations entrain to three types of stimuli (tones, nonsense syllables, and utterances) having similar timing, pitch, and energy contours. Entrainment was indexed by "intertrial phase coherence" in the EEGs of 18 listeners. The results show that theta oscillations at central sites entrain to syllable-size elements in speech and tones. However, delta oscillations at frontotemporal sites specifically entrain to temporal groups in both meaningful utterances and meaningless syllables, which indicates that delta may support but does not directly bear on a processing of content. The findings overall suggest that, although theta entrainment relates to a processing of acoustic attributes, delta entrainment links to a sensory chunking that relates to a processing of properties of articulated sounds. The results also show that measures of intertrial phase coherence can be better suited than cerebro-acoustic coherence in revealing delta entrainment.

A Study on the Morphemization of Meaningless Syllables in Mandarin Phonetic Loans

A Study on the Morphemization of Meaningless Syllables in Mandarin Phonetic Loans

What Vowels Can Tell Us about the Evolution of Music.

Whether music and language evolved independently of each other or whether both evolved from a common precursor remains a hotly debated topic. We here emphasize the role of vowels in the language-music relationship, arguing for a shared heritage of music and speech. Vowels play a decisive role in generating the sound or sonority of syllables, the main vehicles for transporting prosodic information in speech and singing. Timbre is, beyond question, the primary parameter that allows us to discriminate between different vowels, but vowels also have intrinsic pitch, intensity, and duration. There are striking correspondences between the number of vowels and the number of pitches in musical scales across cultures: an upper limit of roughly 12 elements, a lower limit of 2, and a frequency peak at 5–7 elements. Moreover, there is evidence for correspondences between vowels and scales even in specific cultures, e.g., cultures with three vowels tend to have tritonic scales. We report a match between vowel pitch and musical pitch in meaningless syllables of Alpine yodelers, and highlight the relevance of vocal timbre in the music of many non-Western cultures, in which vocal timbre/vowel timbre and musical melody are often intertwined. Studies showing the pivotal role of vowels and their musical qualities in the ontogeny of language and in infant directed speech, will be used as further arguments supporting the hypothesis that music and speech evolved from a common prosodic precursor, where the vowels exhibited both pitch and timbre variations.

Language related differences of the sustained response evoked by natural speech sounds.

In tonal languages, such as Mandarin Chinese, the pitch contour of vowels discriminates lexical meaning, which is not the case in non-tonal languages such as German. Recent data provide evidence that pitch processing is influenced by language experience. However, there are still many open questions concerning the representation of such phonological and language-related differences at the level of the auditory cortex (AC). Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we recorded transient and sustained auditory evoked fields (AEF) in native Chinese and German speakers to investigate language related phonological and semantic aspects in the processing of acoustic stimuli. AEF were elicited by spoken meaningful and meaningless syllables, by vowels, and by a French horn tone. Speech sounds were recorded from a native speaker and showed frequency-modulations according to the pitch-contours of Mandarin. The sustained field (SF) evoked by natural speech signals was significantly larger for Chinese than for German listeners. In contrast, the SF elicited by a horn tone was not significantly different between groups. Furthermore, the SF of Chinese subjects was larger when evoked by meaningful syllables compared to meaningless ones, but there was no significant difference regarding whether vowels were part of the Chinese phonological system or not. Moreover, the N100m gave subtle but clear evidence that for Chinese listeners other factors than purely physical properties play a role in processing meaningful signals. These findings show that the N100 and the SF generated in Heschl’s gyrus are influenced by language experience, which suggests that AC activity related to specific pitch contours of vowels is influenced in a top-down fashion by higher, language related areas. Such interactions are in line with anatomical findings and neuroimaging data, as well as with the dual-stream model of language of Hickok and Poeppel that highlights the close and reciprocal interaction between superior temporal gyrus and sulcus.

Neural Dynamics of Emotional Salience Processing in Response to Voices during the Stages of Sleep.

Sleep has been related to emotional functioning. However, the extent to which emotional salience is processed during sleep is unknown. To address this concern, we investigated night sleep in healthy adults regarding brain reactivity to the emotionally (happily, fearfully) spoken meaningless syllables dada, along with correspondingly synthesized nonvocal sounds. Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals were continuously acquired during an entire night of sleep while we applied a passive auditory oddball paradigm. During all stages of sleep, mismatch negativity (MMN) in response to emotional syllables, which is an index for emotional salience processing of voices, was detected. In contrast, MMN to acoustically matching nonvocal sounds was undetected during Sleep Stage 2 and 3 as well as rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Post-MMN positivity (PMP) was identified with larger amplitudes during Stage 3, and at earlier latencies during REM sleep, relative to wakefulness. These findings clearly demonstrated the neural dynamics of emotional salience processing during the stages of sleep.

Excitability of hand motor areas during articulation of syllables

It is known that articulating different syllables is linked to different grasp actions, e.g. [ti] is linked to precision grip, and [kɑ] to power grip. The aim of the present study was to test whether articulating or hearing these syllables would result in an increased activity in the representation of hand muscles involved in these two actions in a muscle-specific manner. To this end, we used transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to investigate changes in the excitability of the left primary motor cortex (M1) innervating hand muscles while participants articulated or listened to meaningless syllables, listened to a metronome, or observed a fixation cross. The motor-evoked potentials of two hand muscles associated with either a precision or power grip exhibited significantly greater amplitudes during articulation than in passive listening, metronome, and fixation cross conditions. Moreover, these muscles exhibited similar patterns of excitability during articulation regardless of which syllable was articulated. The increased excitability of the left M1 hand area during articulation, but not during perception of the syllables, might be due to the cortico-cortical interaction between the motor representations of oral organs with the hand area.

The dynamic nature of the reconsolidation process and its boundary conditions: Evidence based on human tests

The reconsolidation process is the mechanism by which the strength and/or content of consolidated memories are updated. This process is triggered by the presentation of a reminder (training cues). It is not always possible to trigger the reconsolidation process. For example, memory age and strength are boundary conditions for the reconsolidation process. Here, we investigated the dynamic changes in these conditions. We propose that the boundary conditions of the reconsolidation process are not fixed and vary as a consequence of the interaction between memory features and reminder characteristics. To modify memory properties, participants received a threatening social protocol that improves memory acquisition or a control condition (fake, without social interaction) prior to learning pairs of meaningless syllables. To determine whether a strong young or old declarative memory undergoes the reconsolidation process, we used an interference task (a second list of pairs of meaningless syllables) to disrupt memory re-stabilization. To assess whether the older memory could be strengthened, we repeated the triggering of reconsolidation. Strong young or old memories modulated by a threatening experience could be interfered during reconsolidation and updated (strengthened) by reconsolidation. Rather than being fixed, boundary conditions vary according to the memory features (strong memory), which indicates the dynamic nature of the reconsolidation process. Our findings demonstrate that it is possible to modify these limits by recruiting the reconsolidation process and making it functionally operative again. This novel scenario opens the possibility to new therapeutically approaches that take into account the reconsolidation process.

Von der kompositorischen Funktion und Stellung der Kratemata im byzantinischen Kirchengesang

The Byzantine church chant is a purely liturgical song. The music that is practiced here is primarily linked to the understanding of the text and its comprehension. That’s why the sound-word ratio is very pronounced in the syllabic and semi-melismatic chants. This harmonious relationship between music and poetry is partly destroyed in the very extensive and highly melismatic kalophonic songs, because long note chains are set over a single word, even over the vowel of a single syllable. Closely related to the kalophonic pieces often Kratema are executed, representing the total abolition of the connection between the music and the text message. They are likewise extensive melismata, but have no concrete text and are usually built on the meaningless syllables te-ri-rem. In this study, first some of the different explanations as to the origin and the role of Kratemata in worship events will be presented shortly. The actual core of the investigation are the reflections about what a compositional meaning (in music content, formal, compositional and sound aesthetic way) these pieces have and how they affect the structure and organization of their respective total song (kalophonic piece and Kratema together).

Positive modulation of a neutral declarative memory by a threatening social event

Memories can be altered by negative or arousing experiences due to the activation of the stress-responsive sympatho-adrenal-medullary axis (SYM). Here, we used a neutral declarative memory that was acquired during multi-trial training to determine the effect of a threatening event on memory without emotional valence. To this end, participants received a new threatening social protocol before learning pairs of meaningless syllables and were tested either 15min, 2days or 8days after acquisition. We first demonstrated that this threatening social situation activates not only the SYM axis (Experiment 1) and the hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenal axis (HPA; Experiment 2), but also, it improves the acquisition or early consolidation of the syllable pairs (Experiment 3). This improvement is not a transient effect; it can be observed after the memory is consolidated. Furthermore, this modulation increases the persistence of memory (Experiment 4). Thus, it is possible to affect memories with specific events that contain unrelated content and a different valence.

The Functional Connectome of Speech Control.

In the past few years, several studies have been directed to understanding the complexity of functional interactions between different brain regions during various human behaviors. Among these, neuroimaging research installed the notion that speech and language require an orchestration of brain regions for comprehension, planning, and integration of a heard sound with a spoken word. However, these studies have been largely limited to mapping the neural correlates of separate speech elements and examining distinct cortical or subcortical circuits involved in different aspects of speech control. As a result, the complexity of the brain network machinery controlling speech and language remained largely unknown. Using graph theoretical analysis of functional MRI (fMRI) data in healthy subjects, we quantified the large-scale speech network topology by constructing functional brain networks of increasing hierarchy from the resting state to motor output of meaningless syllables to complex production of real-life speech as well as compared to non-speech-related sequential finger tapping and pure tone discrimination networks. We identified a segregated network of highly connected local neural communities (hubs) in the primary sensorimotor and parietal regions, which formed a commonly shared core hub network across the examined conditions, with the left area 4p playing an important role in speech network organization. These sensorimotor core hubs exhibited features of flexible hubs based on their participation in several functional domains across different networks and ability to adaptively switch long-range functional connectivity depending on task content, resulting in a distinct community structure of each examined network. Specifically, compared to other tasks, speech production was characterized by the formation of six distinct neural communities with specialized recruitment of the prefrontal cortex, insula, putamen, and thalamus, which collectively forged the formation of the functional speech connectome. In addition, the observed capacity of the primary sensorimotor cortex to exhibit operational heterogeneity challenged the established concept of unimodality of this region.

The neural correlates of speech motor sequence learning.

Speech is perhaps the most sophisticated example of a species-wide movement capability in the animal kingdom, requiring split-second sequencing of approximately 100 muscles in the respiratory, laryngeal, and oral movement systems. Despite the unique role speech plays in human interaction and the debilitating impact of its disruption, little is known about the neural mechanisms underlying speech motor learning. Here, we studied the behavioral and neural correlates of learning new speech motor sequences. Participants repeatedly produced novel, meaningless syllables comprising illegal consonant clusters (e.g., GVAZF) over 2 days of practice. Following practice, participants produced the sequences with fewer errors and shorter durations, indicative of motor learning. Using fMRI, we compared brain activity during production of the learned illegal sequences and novel illegal sequences. Greater activity was noted during production of novel sequences in brain regions linked to non-speech motor sequence learning, including the BG and pre-SMA. Activity during novel sequence production was also greater in brain regions associated with learning and maintaining speech motor programs, including lateral premotor cortex, frontal operculum, and posterior superior temporal cortex. Measures of learning success correlated positively with activity in left frontal operculum and white matter integrity under left posterior superior temporal sulcus. These findings indicate speech motor sequence learning relies not only on brain areas involved generally in motor sequencing learning but also those associated with feedback-based speech motor learning. Furthermore, learning success is modulated by the integrity of structural connectivity between these motor and sensory brain regions.