Inferior Frontal Regions Underlie the Perception of Phonetic Category Invariance.
A study examined neural sensitivity to acoustic changes within and between phonetic categories using a short-interval habituation paradigm. Functional magnetic resonance imaging of the region in the left inferior frontal sulcus revealed a pattern of activation consistent with phonetic invariance:...
| Published in: | Psychological Science. Vol. 20; no. 7; pp. 895 - 904 |
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| Main Authors: | , , , |
| Format: | Article |
| Published: |
HWW Temp
July 2009
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| Summary: | A study examined neural sensitivity to acoustic changes within and between phonetic categories using a short-interval habituation paradigm. Functional magnetic resonance imaging of the region in the left inferior frontal sulcus revealed a pattern of activation consistent with phonetic invariance: insensitivity to acoustic changes within a phonetic category and responsiveness to changes between phonetic categories. In contrast, graded sensitivity to both within- and between-category changes was demonstrated by left superior temporal regions. Findings indicate that perceptual insensitivity to changes within a phonetic category may emerge from decision-related mechanisms in the left prefrontal cortex and contribute to an expanding body of literature suggesting that the inferior prefrontal cortex plays a domain-general part in the computation of category representations. |
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