Neural Coding and Perception of Learned Vocalizations

听觉和声音是人类交流的主要工具。我们早期的听觉体验 母语(S)塑造了我们余生听到的方式。到12个月大的时候，我们已经 围绕我们在社交环境中听到的语音音素发展出听觉感知技能。这么早 听觉处理的专门化促进了我们学习说话时感觉运动的整合；准确的 出生第一年的音素辨别与几年后的语言熟练程度相关。一个重要的 追求的目标是了解我们是如何获得和使用语言的，以及当我们不能使用语言时，哪里出了问题 语音正在决定发声的发展经验如何塑造听觉处理和 感知是成功沟通的关键。虽然很明显，语言在生活中的最佳时间 发育仅限于青春期之前，我们不知道为什么年轻的大脑对此特别敏感 听觉-发声体验或发声学习如何塑造听觉回路以服务于交流。我们 建议将发声学习中的操作与中枢听觉处理和行为测量相结合 为了确定早期听觉-发声体验如何塑造听觉皮质和知觉的发育 鸣禽。计划中的实验将确定依赖经验发展的神经机制。 声音交流的能力。这项拟议的研究对NIH任务的意义有三个方面。首先，这是 这项工作将确定伴随着正常发声学习里程碑的听觉皮质处理的变化。 第二，这项工作将测试声音发育延迟和受损对听觉处理和 感知力。第三，我们的结果将为经验操作和培训如何改进提供洞察力 儿童发育性言语障碍的预防、诊断和治疗 有听觉谱系障碍。

Hearing and voice are the principal instruments of human communication. Early auditory experience of our native language(s) shapes the way we hear for the rest of our lives. By 12 months of age, we have already developed auditory perceptual skills around the speech phonemes we hear in social environments. This early specialization of auditory processing facilitates sensorimotor integration as we learn to speak; accurate phoneme discrimination in the first year of life is correlated with language proficiency years later. An important goal in the pursuit to understand how we acquire and use speech and what goes wrong when we can't use speech is determining how developmental experience of vocal sounds shapes auditory processing and perception for successful communication. While it is clear that the optimal time in life for language development is limited to before puberty, we do not know why the young brain is particularly sensitive to auditory-vocal experience or how vocal learning shapes auditory circuits in the service of communication. We propose to integrate manipulations in vocal learning with measures of central auditory processing and behavior to determine how early auditory-vocal experience shapes development of the auditory cortex and perception in songbirds. The proposed experiments will identify neural mechanisms for experience-dependent development of vocal communication. The significance of the proposed research to the NIH mission is three-fold. First, this work will identify changes in auditory cortical processing that accompany milestones in normal vocal learning. Second, the work will test the impact of delayed and impaired vocal development on auditory processing and perception. Third, our results will provide insights into how experience manipulations and training can improve prevention, diagnosis and treatment of developmental speech impairments such as those observed in children with auditory spectrum disorders.