TY  - JOUR
A1  - Yue, Jinxing
A1  - Bastiaanse, Roelien
A1  - Alter, Kai
T1  - Cortical plasticity induced by rapid Hebbian learning of novel tonal word-forms: Evidence from mismatch negativity
JF  - Brain & language : a journal of the neurobiology of language
N2  - Although several experiments reported rapid cortical plasticity induced by passive exposure to novel segmental patterns, few studies have devoted attention to the neural dynamics during the rapid learning of novel tonal word-forms in tonal languages, such as Chinese. In the current study, native speakers of Mandarin Chinese were exposed to acoustically matched real and novel segment-tone patterns. By recording their Mismatch Negativity (MMN) responses (an ERP indicator of long-term memory traces for spoken words), we found enhanced MMNs to the novel word-forms over the left-hemispheric region in the late exposure phase relative to the early exposure phase. In contrast, no significant changes were identified in MMN responses to the real word during familiarisation. Our results suggest a rapid Hebbian learning mechanism in the human neocortex which develops long-term memory traces for a novel segment-tone pattern by establishing new associations between the segmental and tonal representations. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
KW  - Language
KW  - Rapid learning
KW  - Hebbian learning
KW  - Event-related potential
KW  - Novel word
KW  - Mismatch Negativity (MMN)
KW  - Oddball paradigm
KW  - Lexical tone
KW  - Mandarin Chinese
Y1  - 2014
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2014.09.007
SN  - 0093-934X
SN  - 1090-2155
VL  - 139
SP  - 10
EP  - 22
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - San Diego
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Yue, Jinxing
A1  - Alter, Kai-Uwe
A1  - Howard, David
A1  - Bastiaanse, Roelien
T1  - Early access to lexical-level phonological representations of Mandarin word-forms
BT  - evidence from auditory N1 habituation
JF  - Language, cognition and neuroscience
N2  - An auditory habituation design was used to investigate whether lexical-level phonological representations in the brain can be rapidly accessed after the onset of a spoken word. We studied the N1 component of the auditory event-related electrical potential, and measured the amplitude decrements of N1 associated with the repetition of a monosyllabic tone word and an acoustically similar pseudo-word in Mandarin Chinese. Effects related to the contrastive onset consonants were controlled for by introducing two control words. We show that repeated pseudo-words consistently elicit greater amplitude decrements in N1 than real words. Furthermore, this lexicality effect is free from sensory fatigue or rapid learning of the pseudo-word. These results suggest that a lexical-level phonological representation of a spoken word can be accessed as early as 110ms after the onset of the word-form.
KW  - Auditory N1
KW  - short-term habituation
KW  - spoken word
KW  - Mandarin Chinese
KW  - language
KW  - event-related potential
KW  - lexical access
Y1  - 2017
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2017.1290261
SN  - 2327-3798
SN  - 2327-3801
VL  - 32
IS  - 9
SP  - 1148
EP  - 1163
PB  - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
CY  - Abingdon
ER  -