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SUMMARY:The neural correlates of intonation - Brechtje Post\, University o
 f Cambridge
DTSTART:20150521T153000Z
DTEND:20150521T173000Z
UID:TALK56047@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Jamie Douglas
DESCRIPTION:Neurolinguistic studies of intonation have drawn widely diverg
 ing conclusions about the neural underpinnings of intonation. What seems p
 articularly baffling – at least to the intonational phonologist – is t
 hat they appear to show that intonational information is processed quite u
 nlike other types of linguistic information\, since it shows more extensiv
 e activation of e.g. right hemisphere brain structures\, while abstract li
 nguistic information typically engages a predominantly left hemisphere sys
 tem which includes temporal and frontal areas (observed for e.g. syntactic
 \, morphological\, and phonological information including lexical tone). T
 his apparent discrepancy between intonation processing and other types of 
 linguistic processing is difficult to reconcile with current theories of i
 ntonation analysis that assume that intonational information is in part ph
 onological in nature\, since they predict that there should be some parall
 els at least with other types of phonological processing (Autosegmental Me
 trical theory\, in particular).\n\nIn this paper\, I will present a series
  of experiments in which we investigated whether a linguistically-informed
  approach might help us to resolve the conundrum. We combined acoustic ana
 lysis\, perception testing\, functional Magnetic Resonance Imagining\, and
  Event-Related Potentials to test the hypothesis that different types of i
 ntonational information have distinct neural correlates\, depending on whe
 ther the information is phonological in nature\, or phonetic (either para-
  or extra-linguistic). The former should engage a neural system that is ty
 pically involved in abstract linguistic processing\, whereas the latter is
  more right-lateralised\; this would also account for previous findings.\n
 \nThe results supported the hypothesis: Distinct brain areas are activated
  at different points in time as different aspects of the acoustic signal a
 re being processed in the course of abstraction from the incoming signal\,
  becoming more strongly left-lateralised in temporal and inferior frontal 
 areas for ‘phonological intonation’ at later stages of processing. By 
 contrast\, ‘phonetic intonation’ (paralinguistic\, here) predominantly
  recruits right hemisphere structures.\n\nA key implication is that intona
 tion is supported by two distinct cognitive and neural systems\; the one s
 upporting information that is encoded in the linguistic system\, and the o
 ther reflecting perceptual processing more generally (e.g. as in Marslen W
 ilson and Tyler 2007\; cf. Gussenhoven 2002).\n
LOCATION:GR06-7\, English Faculty\, 9 West Road (Sidgwick Site)
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