TY - JOUR A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell A1 - Steinbrink, Jens A1 - Telkemeyer, Silke A1 - Friedrich, Manuela A1 - Friederici, Angela D. A1 - Obrig, Hellmuth T1 - The processing of prosody : evidence of interhemispheric specialization at the age of four Y1 - 2007 SN - 1053-8119 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Telkemeyer, Silke A1 - Rossi, Sonja A1 - Nierhaus, Till A1 - Steinbrink, Jens A1 - Obrig, Hellmuth A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell T1 - Acoustic processing of temporally modulated sounds in infants evidence from a combined near-infrared spectroscopy and EEG study JF - Frontiers in psychology N2 - Speech perception requires rapid extraction of the linguistic content from the acoustic signal. The ability to efficiently process rapid changes in auditory information is important for decoding speech and thereby crucial during language acquisition. Investigating functional networks of speech perception in infancy might elucidate neuronal ensembles supporting perceptual abilities that gate language acquisition. Interhemispheric specializations for language have been demonstrated in infants. How these asymmetries are shaped by basic temporal acoustic properties is under debate. We recently provided evidence that newborns process non-linguistic sounds sharing temporal features with language in a differential and lateralized fashion. The present study used the same material while measuring brain responses of 6 and 3 month old infants using simultaneous recordings of electroencephalography (EEG) and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). NIRS reveals that the lateralization observed in newborns remains constant over the first months of life. While fast acoustic modulations elicit bilateral neuronal activations, slow modulations lead to right-lateralized responses. Additionally, auditory-evoked potentials and oscillatory EEG responses show differential responses for fast and slow modulations indicating a sensitivity for temporal acoustic variations. Oscillatory responses reveal an effect of development, that is, 6 but not 3 month old infants show stronger theta-band desynchronization for slowly modulated sounds. Whether this developmental effect is due to increasing fine-grained perception for spectrotemporal sounds in general remains speculative. Our findings support the notion that a more general specialization for acoustic properties can be considered the basis for lateralization of speech perception. The results show that concurrent assessment of vascular based imaging and electrophysiological responses have great potential in the research on language acquisition. KW - infants KW - speech perception KW - language acquisition KW - auditory processing KW - near-infrared spectroscopy KW - event related potentials KW - brain oscillations Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00062 SN - 1664-1078 VL - 2 IS - 2 PB - Frontiers Research Foundation CY - Lausanne ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Telkemeyer, Silke A1 - Rossi, Sonja A1 - Koch, Stefan P. A1 - Nierhaus, Till A1 - Steinbrink, Jens A1 - Poeppel, David A1 - Obrig, Hellmuth A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell T1 - Sensitivity of newborn auditory cortex to the temporal structure of sounds N2 - Understanding the rapidly developing building blocks of speech perception in infancy requires a close look at the auditory prerequisites for speech sound processing. Pioneering studies have demonstrated that hemispheric specializations for language processing are already present in early infancy. However, whether these computational asymmetries can be considered a function of linguistic attributes or a consequence of basic temporal signal properties is under debate. Several studies in adults link hemispheric specialization for certain aspects of speech perception to an asymmetry in cortical tuning and reveal that the auditory cortices are differentially sensitive to spectrotemporal features of speech. Applying concurrent electrophysiological (EEG) and hemodynamic (near-infrared spectroscopy) recording to newborn infants listening to temporally structured nonspeech signals, we provide evidence that newborns process nonlinguistic acoustic stimuli that share critical temporal features with language in a differential manner. The newborn brain preferentially processes temporal modulations especially relevant for phoneme perception. In line with multi-time-resolution conceptions, modulations on the time scale of phonemes elicit strong bilateral cortical responses. Our data furthermore suggest that responses to slow acoustic modulations are lateralized to the right hemisphere. That is, the newborn auditory cortex is sensitive to the temporal structure of the auditory input and shows an emerging tendency for functional asymmetry. Hence, our findings support the hypothesis that development of speech perception is linked to basic capacities in auditory processing. From birth, the brain is tuned to critical temporal properties of linguistic signals to facilitate one of the major needs of humans: to communicate. Y1 - 2009 UR - http://www.jneurosci.org/ U6 - https://doi.org/10.1523/Jneurosci.1246-09.2009 SN - 0270-6474 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Mehnert, Jan A1 - Brunetti, Maddalena A1 - Steinbrink, Jens A1 - Niedeggen, Michael A1 - Dohle, Christian T1 - Effect of a mirror-like illusion on activation in the precuneus assessed with functional near-infrared spectroscopy JF - Journal of biomedical optics N2 - Mirror therapy is a therapy to treat patients with pain syndromes or hemiparesis after stroke. However, the underlying neurophysiologic mechanisms are not clearly understood. In order to determine the effect of a mirror-like illusion (MIR) on brain activity using functional near-infrared spectroscopy, 20 healthy right-handed subjects were examined. A MIR was induced by a digital horizontal inversion of the subjects' filmed hand. Optodes were placed on the primary motor cortex (M1) and the occipito-parietal cortex (precuneus, PC). Regions of interest (ROI) were defined a priori based on previous results of similar studies and confirmed by the analysis of effect sizes. Analysis of variance of the ROI signal revealed a dissociated pattern: at the PC, the MIR caused a significant inversion of a hemispheric lateralization opposite to the perceived hand, independent of the moving hand. In contrast, activity in M1 showed lateralization opposite to the moving hand, but revealed no mirror effect. These findings extend our understanding on interhemispheric rivalry and indicate that a MIR is integrated into visuomotor coordination similar to normal view, irrespective of the hand that is actually performing the task. (C) 2013 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) KW - functional near-infrared spectroscopy KW - optical imaging KW - mirror illusion KW - mirror therapy KW - precuneus Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JBO.18.6.066001 SN - 1083-3668 VL - 18 IS - 6 PB - SPIE CY - Bellingham ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Mehnert, Jan A1 - Akhrif, Atae A1 - Telkemeyer, Silke A1 - Rossi, Sonja A1 - Schmitz, Christoph H. A1 - Steinbrink, Jens A1 - Wartenburger, Isabell A1 - Obrig, Hellmuth A1 - Neufang, Susanne T1 - Developmental changes in brain activation and functional connectivity during response inhibition in the early childhood brain JF - Brain and development : official journal of the Japanese Society of Child Neurology N2 - Response inhibition is an attention function which develops relatively early during childhood. Behavioral data suggest that by the age of 3, children master the basic task requirements for the assessment of response inhibition but performance improves substantially until the age of 7. The neuronal mechanisms underlying these developmental processes, however, are not well understood. In this study, we examined brain activation patterns and behavioral performance of children aged between 4 and 6 years compared to adults by applying a go/no-go paradigm during near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) brain imaging. We furthermore applied task-independent functional connectivity measures to the imaging data to identify maturation of intrinsic neural functional networks. We found a significant group x condition related interaction in terms of inhibition-related reduced right fronto-parietal activation in children compared to adults. In contrast, motor-related activation did not differ between age groups. Functional connectivity analysis revealed that in the children's group, short-range coherence within frontal areas was stronger, and long-range coherence between frontal and parietal areas was weaker, compared to adults. Our findings show that in children aged from 4 to 6 years fronto-parietal brain maturation plays a crucial part in the cognitive development of response inhibition. KW - Optical tomography KW - NIRS KW - Response inhibition KW - Functional connectivity KW - Development KW - Early childhood Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.braindev.2012.11.006 SN - 0387-7604 SN - 1872-7131 VL - 35 IS - 10 SP - 894 EP - 904 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER -