Neural encoding of voice pitch and formant structure at birth as revealed by frequency-following responses.

ABSTRACT: Detailed neural encoding of voice pitch and formant structure plays a crucial role in speech perception, and is of key importance for an appropriate acquisition of the phonetic repertoire in infants since birth. However, the extent to what newborns are capable of extracting pitch and formant structure information from the temporal envelope and the temporal fine structure of speech sounds, respectively, remains unclear. Here, we recorded the frequency-following response (FFR) elicited by a novel two-vowel, rising-pitch-ending stimulus to simultaneously characterize voice pitch and formant structure encoding accuracy in a sample of neonates and adults. Data revealed that newborns tracked changes in voice pitch reliably and no differently than adults, but exhibited weaker signatures of forman

SUBMITTER: Arenillas-Alcon S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7987955 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature