ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2014
Infants' brain responses to speech suggest analysis by synthesis.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 68 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
68 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 223 citations in OpenAlex.
- Magnetoencephalography and the infant brain.NeuroImage · 2019Pooled it
- Beta rhythm modulation by speech sounds: somatotopic mapping in somatosensory cortex.Scientific reports · 2016Trial
- Musical intervention enhances infants' neural processing of temporal structure in music and speech.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2016Trial
- Revolutionizing Pediatric Neurophysiology With Magnetoencephalography.Psychophysiology · 2026Review
- Time-efficient Methodology for Robustly Assessing Speech-related Mismatch Responses in Adults and Infants.Journal of cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Articulating while listening supports the emerging perception-production link in early infancy.Scientific reports · 2026Article
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- Bridging language phenotypes, neural dynamics and gene regulation in autism.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2026Review
- Utilizing functional neuroimaging to study early language development.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2025Review
- Ethnokinesiology: towards a neuromechanical understanding of cultural differences in movement.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Paediatric magnetoencephalography and its role in neurodevelopmental disorders.The British journal of radiology · 2024Review
- Functional and structural maturation of auditory cortex from 2 months to 2 years old.Clinical neurophysiology : official journal of the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology · 2024Article
- Automatic imitation of speech is enhanced for non-native sounds.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2024Article
- Birds and babies: Ontogeny of vocal learning.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Babbling opens the sensory phase for imitative vocal learning.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Infants' brain responses to social interaction predict future language growth.Current biology : CB · 2024Article
- Mapping cortical activations underlying covert and overt language production using high-density diffuse optical tomography.NeuroImage · 2023Article
- Article
- Quantifying latent social motivation and its associations with joint attention and language in infants at high and low likelihood for autism spectrum disorder.Developmental science · 2023Article
8 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Historic theories of speech perception (Motor Theory and Analysis by Synthesis) invoked listeners' knowledge of speech production to explain speech perception. Neuroimaging data show that adult listeners activate motor brain areas during speech perception. In two experiments using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we investigated motor brain activation, as well as auditory brain activation, during discrimination of native and nonnative syllables in infants at two ages that straddle the developmental transition from language-universal to language-specific speech perception. Adults are also tested in Exp. 1. MEG data revealed that 7-mo-old infants activate auditory (superior temporal) as well as motor brain areas (Broca's area, cerebellum) in response to speech, and equivalently for native and nonnative syllables. However, in 11- and 12-mo-old infants, native speech activates auditory brain areas to a greater degree than nonnative, whereas nonnative speech activates motor brain areas to a greater degree than native speech. This double dissociation in 11- to 12-mo-old infants matches the pattern of results obtained in adult listeners. Our infant data are consistent with Analysis by Synthesis: auditory analysis of speech is coupled with synthesis of the motor plans necessary to produce the speech signal. The findings have implications for: (i) perception-action theories of speech perception, (ii) the impact of "motherese" on early language learning, and (iii) the "social-gating" hypothesis and humans' development of social understanding.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.