Who ate the candy? Neural processing of prosodic contrastive focus. - Archive ouverte HAL Accéder directement au contenu
Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2010

Who ate the candy? Neural processing of prosodic contrastive focus.

Résumé

Introduction. Considered as the melody of speech, the neural processing of prosody has long been assumed to be right-lateralized (Ross, 1981; Zatorre et al., 1992; Mayer et al., 2002). However, prosody often brings linguistic information and likely involves left-sided language areas (Baum & Pell, 1999; Astésano et al., 2004). One fine example is prosodic contrastive focus which is used to emphasize a constituent in an utterance as opposed to another using a specific intonational contour ('THOMASF mangeait le bonbon' / 'THOMASF ate the candy'). Previous studies have analyzed the processing of prosodic focus but either in an interlinguistic perspective (Tong et al., 2005) or in a framework of affective vs. linguistic comparison (Wildgruber et al., 2004). The aim of the present fMRI study is to clarify the neural network involved in the processing of prosodic contrastive focus in French and to examine potential hemispheric specialization. Methods. 22 French adults participated in the experiment. Two conditions were compared: Focus (F; utterances with narrow contrastive focus on the subject or the object) and Neutral (N; neutral broad focused utterances). The auditory sentences all had the same syntactic and syllabic structure (e.g., 'Thomas mangeait le bonbon' / 'Thomas ate the candy'). The task consisted in determining whether each auditory sentence contained contrastive focus or not. Responses were recorded and performance of task execution was evaluated. A random-effect group analysis was performed on the F vs. N contrast images (p < 0.001, uncorrected). In order to test possible hemispheric lateralization, Regions of Interest (ROI) analyses were carried-out. To this aim, ROIs were based on the whole-brain activation obtained by contrasting F vs. N in all subjects and delineated in the left and right hemispheres symmetrically. For each ROI, a repeated ANOVA was performed on the parameter estimates with the hemisphere as a within-subject factor. Results. Analysis of the correct responses confirmed that the tasks was perfectly performed (Focus: M = 92.99%, SD = 6.73%; Neutral: N = 97.72 %, SD = 3.85%). Compared to the neutral sentences, the processing of prosodic focus involved activations in the left premotor cortex, the inferior frontal gyrus bilaterally, the left superior and right middle temporal gyri, the supramarginal gyrus bilaterally, and the left superior parietal lobule (Group analysis; Figure 1-Panel A). In addition, left dominant activations were observed in the inferior frontal gyrus, the supramarginal gyrus and the anterior insula (ROi analyses; Figure1-Panel B). Conclusion. Altogether, these results demonstrate that the perception of prosodic focus is not strictly right-lateralized but rather involves bilateral processes in order to detect focus cues. The strong right middle temporal activation likely suggest that the melodic processing of the intonational contour rather takes place in the right hemisphere whereas the associative processes towards a linguistic decision would rather be left-lateralized (left dominance of superior temporal, parietal and frontal regions). This study provides evidence that that both hemispheres participate in the auditory perception of prosodic contrastive focus, with a left-dominant contribution for morpho-syntactic processes and thematic role monitoring.
Fichier non déposé

Dates et versions

hal-00537234 , version 1 (17-11-2010)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-00537234 , version 1

Citer

Marcela Perrone-Bertolotti, Marion Dohen, Hélène Loevenbruck, Marc Sato, Cédric Pichat, et al.. Who ate the candy? Neural processing of prosodic contrastive focus.. NLC 2010 - 2nd Annual Neurobiology of Language Conference, Nov 2010, San Diego, Californie, United States. ⟨hal-00537234⟩
206 Consultations
0 Téléchargements

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More