TY  - GEN
Y1  - 2012/12/07/
UR  - https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/14212/
PB  - University of Heidelberg
A1  - Fan, Christina Siu-Dschu
N1  - CD zur Dissertation im Druckexemplar als Beilage unter der Signatur:
2013 U 27
AV  - public
ID  - heidok14212
KW  - MEG
KW  -  SF
KW  -  Sustained Field
KW  -  Sustained Responses
KW  -  Neural Processing
KW  -  Tonal Languages
KW  -  Chinese
KW  -  Mandarin Chinese
CY  - Heidelberg, Germany
TI  - Sustained Responses as Neurophysiological Parameter for the Assessment of Processing of Tonal Languages
N2  - To understand speech processing is one of the ultimate goals of investigations of sound processing
in the auditory cortex. Chinese tones are the perfect object for this kind of investigation
because they are very short but still contain complex linguistic information. In tonal languages
such as Mandarin Chinese, pitch contours discriminate lexical meaning at a systematic level,
which is not the case in non-tonal languages such as German. It is still unclear how such differences
in phonological systems are reflected at the cortical level. Using magnetoencephalography
I investigated the sustained field (SF) evoked in native Chinese and native German speakers.
Natural speech stimuli evoked significantly larger SF for the Chinese than for the German
group, whereas for a musical tone there was no significant difference between both group. The
SF for Chinese subjects were larger when evoked by meaningful syllables as compared to meaningless
ones, but there was no significant difference in the SF evoked when vowels were part
of the Chinese phonological system or not. These findings suggest that the SF generated in
the auditory cortex represents a relevant neurophysiological parameter for the assessment of
language-related processes.
ER  -