Analysis of the F0 magnitude of the auditory brainstem response

 

In MATLAB (Mathworks) a fast Fourier transform was performed separately for the formant transition (20–60 ms) and the steady-state response (60–180 ms). From the resultant spectrum, average amplitudes of specific frequency bins were calculated. Each bin was 40 Hz wide, centered on the stimulus F0 (100 Hz).

Acknowledgments

We thank the students and their families as well as the teachers and staff (especially Kate Ulett for initiating this neuroeducation liaison) of the high schools participating in this study. We also acknowledge the members of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, especially Travis White-Schwoch and Trent Nicol, and the Bilingualism and Psycholinguistics Laboratory for their helpful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. We thank the members of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory that helped with testing, especially Rafael Escobedo. This research is funded in part by National Science Foundation Grant 1015614 (to N.K.), the Mathers Foundation (to N.K.), the Hugh Knowles Center of Northwestern University (to N.K.), National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Grant R01HD059858 (to V.M.), and National Research Service Award Institutional Research Training Grant T32 DC009399-01A10 (to J.K.).

Footnotes

· ¹To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: nkraus@northwestern.edu.

· Author contributions: J.K., E.S., and N.K. designed research; J.K. performed research; J.K. and A.S. analyzed data; and J.K., V.M., A.S., E.S., and N.K. wrote the paper.

· The authors declare no conflict of interest.

· This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.

 

References

 

1. Recanzone GH,

2. Schreiner CE,

3. Merzenich MM

(1993) Plasticity in the frequency representation of primary auditory cortex following discrimination training in adult owl monkeys. J Neurosci 13:87–103.

4. Kilgard MP,

5. Merzenich MM

(1998) Plasticity of temporal information processing in the primary auditory cortex. Nat Neurosci 1:727–731.

 

6. Fritz J,

7. Shamma S,

8. Elhilali M,

9. Klein D

(2003) Rapid task-related plasticity of spectrotemporal receptive fields in primary auditory cortex. Nat Neurosci 6:1216–1223.

10. Buonomano DV,

11. Merzenich MM

(1998) Cortical plasticity: From synapses to maps. Annu Rev Neurosci 21:149–186.

12. Draganski B,

13. et al.

(2004) Neuroplasticity: Changes in grey matter induced by training. Nature 427:311–312.

 

14. Kroll JF

(2009) The consequences of bilingualism for the mind and the brain. Psychol Sci Public Interest 10:i–ii.

 

15. Abutalebi J,

16. et al.

(2011) Bilingualism tunes the anterior cingulate cortex for conflict monitoring.Cereb Cortex.

 

17. Mechelli A,

18. et al.

(2004) Neurolinguistics: Structural plasticity in the bilingual brain. Nature 431:757.

 

19. Marian V,

20. Spivey M

(2003) Competing activation in bilingual language processing: Within-and between-language competition. Biling Lang Cogn 6:97–115.

 

21. Marian V,

22. Spivey M

(2003) Bilingual and monolingual processing of competing lexical items. Appl Psycholinguist 24:173–193.

 

23. Thierry G,

24. Wu YJ

(2007) Brain potentials reveal unconscious translation during foreign-language comprehension. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 104:12530–12535.

25. Bialystok E

(2011) Reshaping the mind: The benefits of bilingualism. Can J Exp Psychol 65:229–235.

26. Carlson SM,

27. Meltzoff AN

(2008) Bilingual experience and executive functioning in young children.Dev Sci 11:282–298.

28. Bialystok E,

29. Martin MM,

30. Viswanathan M

(2005) Bilingualism across the lifespan: The rise and fall of inhibitory control. Int J Biling 9:103–119.

 

31. Reck SG,

32. Hund AM

(2011) Sustained attention and age predict inhibitory control during early childhood. J Exp Child Psychol 108:504–512.

33. van der Molen MW

(2000) Developmental changes in inhibitory processing: Evidence from psychophysiological measures. Biol Psychol 54:207–239.

 

34. van der Stelt O,

35. Kok A,

36. Smulders FT,

37. Snel J,

38. Boudewijn Gunning W

(1998) Cerebral event-related potentials associated with selective attention to color: developmental changes from childhood to adulthood. Psychophysiology 35:227–239.

39. Luna B,

40. Garver KE,

41. Urban TA,

42. Lazar NA,

43. Sweeney JA

(2004) Maturation of cognitive processes from late childhood to adulthood. Child Dev 75:1357–1372.

 

44. Spear LP

(2000) Neurobehavioral changes in adolescence. Curr Dir Psychol Sci 9:111–114.

45. Bialystok E,

46. Viswanathan M

(2009) Components of executive control with advantages for bilingual children in two cultures. Cognition 112:494–500.

Bialystok E

(1999) Cognitive complexity and attentional control in the bilingual mind. Child Dev 70:636–644.

47. Fritz JB,

48. Elhilali M,

49. David SV,

50. Shamma SA

(2007) Auditory attention—focusing the searchlight on sound. Curr Opin Neurobiol 17:437–455.

Gao E,

51. Suga N

(2000) Experience-dependent plasticity in the auditory cortex and the inferior colliculus of bats: Role of the corticofugal system. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 97:8081–8086.

Skoe E,

52. Kraus N

(2010) Auditory brain stem response to complex sounds: A tutorial. Ear Hear 31:302–324.

53. Kraus N

(2011) Listening in on the listening brain. Phys Today 64:40–45.

Carcagno S,

54. Plack CJ

(2011) Subcortical plasticity following perceptual learning in a pitch discrimination task. J Assoc Res Otolaryngol 12:89–100.

Song JH,

55. Skoe E,

56. Wong PC,

57. Kraus N

(2008) Plasticity in the adult human auditory brainstem following short-term linguistic training. J Cogn Neurosci 20:1892–1902.

Parbery-Clark A,

58. Skoe E,

59. Kraus N

(2009) Musical experience limits the degradative effects of background noise on the neural processing of sound. J Neurosci 29:14100–14107.

60. Musacchia G,

61. Sams M,

62. Skoe E,

63. Kraus N

(2007) Musicians have enhanced subcortical auditory and audiovisual processing of speech and music. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 104:15894–15898.

64. Krishnan A,

65. Xu Y,

66. Gandour J,

67. Cariani P

(2005) Encoding of pitch in the human brainstem is sensitive to language experience. Cogn Brain Res 25:161–168.

Bialystok E,

68. Depape AM

(2009) Musical expertise, bilingualism, and executive functioning. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform 35:565–574.

69. Moreno S,

70. et al.

(2009) Musical training influences linguistic abilities in 8-year-old children: More evidence for brain plasticity. Cereb Cortex 19:712–723.

 

71. Kraus N,

72. Chandrasekaran B

(2010) Music training for the development of auditory skills. Nat Rev Neurosci 11:599–605.

Anderson S,

73. Skoe E,

74. Chandrasekaran B,

75. Zecker S,

76. Kraus N

(2010) Brainstem correlates of speech-in-noise perception in children. Hear Res 270:151–157.

77. Song JH,

78. Skoe E,

79. Banai K,

80. Kraus N

(2011) Perception of speech in noise: Neural correlates. J Cogn Neurosci 23:2268–2279.

Parbery-Clark A,

81. Strait DL,

82. Kraus N

(2011) Context-dependent encoding in the auditory brainstem subserves enhanced speech-in-noise perception in musicians. Neuropsychologia 49:3338–3345.

83. Kim KHS,

84. Relkin NR,

85. Lee KM,

86. Hirsch J

(1997) Distinct cortical areas associated with native and second languages. Nature 388:171–174.

87. McNealy K,

88. Mazziotta JC,

89. Dapretto M

(2011) Age and experience shape developmental changes in the neural basis of language-related learning. Dev Sci 14:1261–1282.

Crinion J,

90. et al.

(2006) Language control in the bilingual brain. Science 312:1537–1540.

91. Altenberg EP,

92. Ferrand CT

(2006) Fundamental frequency in monolingual English, bilingual English/Russian, and bilingual English/Cantonese young adult women. J Voice 20:89–96.

Patel AD

(2011) Why would musical training benefit the neural encoding of speech? The OPERA hypothesis. Front Psychol 2:142.

Atiani S,

93. Elhilali M,

94. David SV,

95. Fritz JB,

96. Shamma SA

(2009) Task difficulty and performance induce diverse adaptive patterns in gain and shape of primary auditory cortical receptive fields. Neuron 61:467–480.

Fritz JB,

97. Elhilali M,

98. Shamma SA

(2005) Differential dynamic plasticity of A1 receptive fields during multiple spectral tasks. J Neurosci 25:7623–7635.

Bajo VM,

99. Nodal FR,

100. Moore DR,

101. King AJ

(2010) The descending corticocollicular pathway mediates learning-induced auditory plasticity. Nat Neurosci 13:253–260.

 

102. Wong PCM,

103. Skoe E,

104. Russo NM,

105. Dees T,

106. Kraus N

(2007) Musical experience shapes human brainstem encoding of linguistic pitch patterns. Nat Neurosci 10:420–422.

Kaushanskaya M,

107. Marian V

(2009) The bilingual advantage in novel word learning. Psychon Bull Rev 16:705–710.

Marques C,

108. Moreno S,

109. Castro SL,

110. Besson M

(2007) Musicians detect pitch violation in a foreign language better than nonmusicians: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence. J Cogn Neurosci 19:1453–1463.

D’Angiulli A,

111. Herdman A,

112. Stapells D,

113. Hertzman C

(2008) Children’s event-related potentials of auditory selective attention vary with their socioeconomic status. Neuropsychology 22:293–300.

114. Marian V,

115. Blumenfeld HK,

116. Kaushanskaya M

(2007) The Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q): Assessing language profiles in bilinguals and multilinguals. J Speech Lang Hear Res 50:940–967.

Fabbro F

(2001) The bilingual brain: Cerebral representation of languages. Brain Lang 79:211–222.

117. Klatt D

(1980) Software for cascade/parallel formant synthesizer. J Acoust Soc Am 67:971–975.

118. Chandrasekaran B,

119. Kraus N

(2010) The scalp-recorded brainstem response to speech: Neural origins and plasticity. Psychophysiology 47:236–246.

 

120. Liu LF,

121. Palmer AR,

122. Wallace MN

(2006) Phase-locked responses to pure tones in the inferior colliculus. J Neurophysiol 95:1926–1935.