Speech prosody supports speaker selection and auditory stream segregation in a multi-talker situation.

To process speech in a multi-talker environment, listeners need to segregate the mixture of incoming speech streams and focus their attention on one of them. Potentially, speech prosody could aid the segregation of different speakers, the selection of the desired speech stream, and detecting targets within the attended stream. For testing these issues, we recorded behavioral responses and extracted event-related potentials and functional brain networks from electroencephalographic signals recorded while participants listened to two concurrent speech streams, performing a lexical detection and a recognition memory task in parallel. Prosody manipulation was applied to the attended speech stream in one group of participants and to the ignored speech stream in another group. Naturally recorded speech stimuli were either intact, synthetically F0-flattened, or prosodically suppressed by the speaker. Results show that prosody - especially the parsing cues mediated by speech rate - facilitates stream selection, while playing a smaller role in auditory stream segmentation and target detection.

Newborn infants differently process adult directed and infant directed speech.

Infant directed speech (IDS) may serve important functions in language acquisition and in adult-infant communication. The processing of IDS evolves during the first years of life. In order to serve as an effective tool of language acquisition, already very young infants should be able to distinguish IDS from adult directed speech (ADS). We tested whether the ability to discriminate these two speech registers is functional in neonates, by recording EEG from 98 newborn infants in response to Hungarian words naturally spoken in the IDS and the ADS register. Words presented in the ADS register elicited a centro-parietal slow positivity in the 200-600 ms time window whereas words in IDS register elicited a small frontal negativity in the 700-900 ms time window. We conclude that newborn infants differentiate natural speech sounds based on speech register.

Dynamic near-real-time magnetic resonance imaging for analyzing the velopharyngeal closure in comparison with videofluoroscopy.

PURPOSE: To demonstrate the feasibility of dynamic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with near-real-time temporal resolution ("real-time MRI") for analyzing the velopharyngeal closure in comparison with multiview videofluoroscopy. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Seven patients (three females and four males, 5-21 years old, mean age=11.3 years) with suspected velopharyngeal insufficiency, and one healthy volunteer were examined with videofluoroscopy and real-time MRI using a turbo-spin-echo (TSE) sequence (TR=170 msec, TE=21 msec, slice thickness=6 mm, six images per second). Imaging was done during phonation in all three image planes. The results were analyzed by two radiologists in comparison with videofluoroscopy as the standard of reference for overall image quality and the pattern of velopharyngeal closure. RESULTS: Real-time MRI correctly depicted the pattern of velopharyngeal closure in correspondence to videofluoroscopy in all cases. Concerning the movement of the pharyngeal walls, real-time MRI falsely depicted a general movement of the dorsal pharyngeal wall in one case, whereas videofluoroscopy showed no movement. In one patient, real-time MRI provided additional information by showing an asymmetric movement of the lateral pharyngeal walls that could not be depicted by videofluoroscopy due to technical limitations. Concerning image quality, the coronal plane was more difficult to evaluate with real-time MRI compared to videofluoroscopy. The axial plane was easier to analyze in real-time MRI compared to videofluoroscopy. CONCLUSION: Real-time MRI has the potential to depict the pattern of velopharyngeal closure in close correlation with videofluoroscopy, and may deliver additional information in selected cases.

The influence of oral cavity tumour treatment on the voice quality and on fundamental frequency.

This study aimed to discover whether the surgical treatment of oral cavity tumours only affects on articulation or whether it also leads to a change in voice quality and fundamental frequency. Twelve participants were examined pre- and postoperatively for mean speaking fundamental frequency, standard deviation of the mean fundamental frequency, harmonic-to-noise-ratio and intrinsic pitch. All the parameters showed a substantial postoperative change in some patients.