Infants' Neural Basis for Language Using New NIRS

使用新 NIRS 的婴儿语言神经基础

• 批准号: 7090168
• 负责人: LAURA-ANN PETITTO
• 金额: $ 19.91万
• 依托单位: DARTMOUTH COLLEGE
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-05-01 至 2008-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7090168
• 关键词: adult human (21+); behavioral /social science research tag; bioimaging /biomedical imaging; brain imaging /visualization /scanning; brain mapping; child psychology; clinical research; developmental neurobiology; functional magnetic resonance imaging; human subject; infant human (0-1 year); infrared spectrometry; language development; neural information processing; phonology; psychological tests; sound perception; speech; visual perception

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): We propose an entirely new application of new brain imaging technology (Near Infrared Spectroscopy, NIRS) to a previously unresolved scientific debate that has puzzled scientists for nearly 40 years: How do young infants discover the phonetic building blocks of their language from the constantly varying linguistic and perceptual stream around them? NIRS is non-invasive optical technology that, like fMRI, measures cerebral hemodynamic activity and thus permits 1 to "see" inside the brains of children and adults while processing specific aspects of language and cognitive tasks. Unlike fMRI, NIRS is highly portable, child-friendly (child can be seated on mom's lap in home, lab or school), tolerates movement more than fMRI (participants can vocalize/talk), and can be used with alert babies. Standardized behavioral tasks involving (i) visual perception, (ii) auditory perception, and (iii) native and non-native phonetic perception will be used with "young" (3-4 mo) and "old" (13-14 mo) infants and adults during NIRS recordings to test specific within- hemisphere neuroanatomical hypotheses about specific tissue (and networks of neural tissue) and their linguistic or general auditory perception functions. Our use of this exciting new NIRS technology with infants in this way will provide important resolutions to scientific questions about (a) the multiple factors that underlie early language acquisition and general auditory perception and the specific type of processing tissue that govern them, (b) the developmental trajectories of linguistic and general auditory processing tissue, and (c) the peaked sensitivity that linguistic and auditory processing tissue has to certain kinds of input over others in early development. This work will help resolve classic scientific debate about whether language-specific versus perception-general mechanisms initiate/govern early language learning, and lay bare the multiple factors that become integrated in early life to promote later healthy language growth in children. These findings, with our plan to provide guidelines for the principled use of NIRS with infants, may ultimately be used to identify and predict babies at risk for language/sequencing disorders (e.g., dyslexia) even before they babble or utter their first words. These findings about children's phonological capacity will also provide scientific "evidence-based" information vital to word segmentation in successful language learning and reading and will impact U.S. educational policy regarding early language remediation and teaching.

描述（由申请人提供）：我们提出了一种全新的大脑成像技术（近红外光谱，NIRS）的全新应用，以解决一个之前悬而未决的科学争论，该争论困扰了科学家近 40 年：年幼的婴儿如何发现语音构建模块他们的语言来自周围不断变化的语言和感知流？ NIRS 是一种非侵入性光学技术，与功能磁共振成像 (fMRI) 一样，可测量大脑血流动力学活动，从而允许人们在处理语言和认知任务的特定方面时“看到”儿童和成人的大脑内部。与 fMRI 不同，NIRS 高度便携、适合儿童（孩子可以在家里、实验室或学校坐在妈妈的腿上），比 fMRI 更能容忍运动（参与者可以发声/说话），并且可以与警觉的婴儿一起使用。涉及 (i) 视觉感知、(ii) 听觉感知和 (iii) 母语和非母语语音感知的标准化行为任务将与“年轻”（3-4 个月）和“年长”（13-14 个月）一起使用在 NIRS 记录期间对婴儿和成人进行测试，以测试有关特定组织（和神经组织网络）及其语言或一般听觉感知功能的特定半球内神经解剖学假设。我们以这种方式对婴儿使用这种令人兴奋的新型 NIRS 技术，将为以下科学问题提供重要的解决方案：(a) 早期语言习得和一般听觉感知背后的多种因素以及控制它们的特定类型的处理组织，(b)语言和一般听觉处理组织的发育轨迹，以及（c）语言和听觉处理组织在早期发育中对某些类型的输入的敏感性达到峰值。这项工作将有助于解决关于特定语言机制与感知一般机制是否启动/控制早期语言学习的经典科学争论，并揭示在早期生活中融入的多种因素，以促进儿童以后的健康语言成长。这些发现以及我们计划为婴儿原则性使用 NIRS 提供指南，最终可能用于识别和预测有语言/顺序障碍（例如阅读障碍）风险的婴儿，甚至在他们牙牙学语或说出第一个单词之前。这些关于儿童语音能力的发现还将提供科学的“基于证据的”信息，这对于成功的语言学习和阅读中的分词至关重要，并将影响美国有关早期语言补救和教学的教育政策。