Entraining the Brain: Applications to Language Research and Links to Musical Entrainment

Clayton’s paper provides a clear and accessible summary of the significance of entrainment for music making, and for human behaviour in general. He notes the central role of metrical structure in musical entrainment, the possible role of oscillatory neural activity, and the core notion of phase alignment. Here I show how these same factors are central to speech processing by the human brain. I argue that entrainment to metrical structure is core to linguistic as well as musical human behaviour. I illustrate this view using entrainment data from developmental dyslexia. The core role of entrainment in efficient speech processing suggests that language difficulties in childhood may benefit from music-based remediation that focuses on multi-modal rhythmic entrainment. Alignment of linguistic and musical metrical structure seems likely to be fundamental to successful remediation

Studies on pollinator fauna and their relative abundance of sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) at Pantnagar, Uttarakhand, India

Pollinators provide key services to both natural and agricultural ecosystems. Agricultural productivity depends, in part on pollinator populations from adjacent semi natural habitats.The diversity and abundance of different insect visitors on sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) were studied at Pantnagar. A total of 12 insect visitors belonging to order Hymenoptera (9), Diptera (1), Lepidoptera (1), and Coleoptera (1) were observed visiting the blossom of sunflower. The abundance (percentage of insect/m2/2min.) of Hymenopterans were maximum (86.09%) followed by the Dipterans (22.80 %) and others (3.87%). In Hymenopterans, the honeybees (Apis bees) were observed maximum (65.22 %) followed by non Apis bees (20.39 %) and the scolid wasp (1.69 %)

Impaired extraction of speech rhythm from temporal modulation patterns in speech in developmental dyslexia

Dyslexia is associated with impaired neural representation of the sound structure of words (phonology). The “phonological deficit” in dyslexia may arise in part from impaired speech rhythm perception, thought to depend on neural oscillatory phase-locking to slow amplitude modulation (AM) patterns in the speech envelope. Speech contains AM patterns at multiple temporal rates, and these different AM rates are associated with phonological units of different grain sizes, e.g., related to stress, syllables or phonemes. Here, we assess the ability of adults with dyslexia to use speech AMs to identify rhythm patterns (RPs). We study 3 important temporal rates: “Stress” (~2 Hz), “Syllable” (~4 Hz) and “Sub-beat” (reduced syllables, ~14 Hz). 21 dyslexics and 21 controls listened to nursery rhyme sentences that had been tone-vocoded using either single AM rates from the speech envelope (Stress only, Syllable only, Sub-beat only) or pairs of AM rates (Stress + Syllable, Syllable + Sub-beat). They were asked to use the acoustic rhythm of the stimulus to identity the original nursery rhyme sentence. The data showed that dyslexics were significantly poorer at detecting rhythm compared to controls when they had to utilize multi-rate temporal information from pairs of AMs (Stress + Syllable or Syllable + Sub-beat). These data suggest that dyslexia is associated with a reduced ability to utilize AMs <20 Hz for rhythm recognition. This perceptual deficit in utilizing AM patterns in speech could be underpinned by less efficient neuronal phase alignment and cross-frequency neuronal oscillatory synchronization in dyslexia. Dyslexics' perceptual difficulties in capturing the full spectro-temporal complexity of speech over multiple timescales could contribute to the development of impaired phonological representations for words, the cognitive hallmark of dyslexia across languages

Phonological awareness, vocabulary, and word reading in children who use cochlear implants: does age of implantation explain individual variability in performance outcomes and growth?

The phonological awareness (PA), vocabulary, and word reading abilities of 19 children with cochlear implants (CI) were assessed. Nine children had an implant early (between 2 and 3.6 years) and 10 had an implant later (between 5 and 7 years). Participants were tested twice over a 12-month period on syllable, rhyme, and phoneme awareness (see James et al., 2005). Performance of Cl users was compared against younger hearing children matched for reading level. Two standardized assessments of vocabulary and single word reading were administered. As a group, the children fitted early had better performance outcomes on PA, vocabulary, and reading compared to hearing benchmark groups. The early group had significant growth on rhyme awareness, whereas the late group showed no significant gains in PA over time. There was wide individual variation in performance and growth in the Cl users. Two participants with the best overall development were both fitted with an implant late in childhoo

Exploration of various flours as pollen substitutes for Apis mellifera L. during Dearth period at Tarai region of Uttarakhand, India

Studies on evaluation of various flours as pollen substitutes and availability of pollen resources for Apis mellifera honey bees were conducted at Govind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture &amp; Technology, Pantnagar, India during 2010. Four flours were taken viz. Soybean, Maize, Wheat and Gram as pollen substitutes for A. mellifera. All the flours were mixed with honey and water to make a total of 4 treatments (4 flours + honey + water). Treatment T1 (Soybean flour + honey + water) were found to be best in reference to visitation of bees with a mean number of 32.59 honey bee foragers /5min/day and weight loss in flours was 19.12 g due to foraging by bees followed by the treatment T3 (Maize flour + honey + water) and T2 (Wheat flour + honey + water) were found 29.30 and 23.05, respectively. Gram flour + honey + water (T4) combination were found to be least preferred pollen substitute for A. mellifera (19.76 honey bee foragers/5min/day) with a weight loss 6.66 g. The overall study has great significance for bee keepers. The use of pollen substitute is important for growth and development of the bee colonies not only in dearth periods but also at other times (during foraging, pollination process and to overcome pesticide exposures.). From the present findings it can be concluded that although bees have accepted and grew on all the diets

Basic auditory processing and sensitivity to prosodic structure in children with specific language impairments: a new look at a perceptual hypothesis.

Children with specific language impairments (SLIs) show impaired perception and production of spoken language, and can also present with motor, auditory, and phonological difficulties. Recent auditory studies have shown impaired sensitivity to amplitude rise time (ART) in children with SLIs, along with non-speech rhythmic timing difficulties. Linguistically, these perceptual impairments should affect sensitivity to speech prosody and syllable stress. Here we used two tasks requiring sensitivity to prosodic structure, the DeeDee task and a stress misperception task, to investigate this hypothesis. We also measured auditory processing of ART, rising pitch and sound duration, in both speech ("ba") and non-speech (tone) stimuli. Participants were 45 children with SLI aged on average 9 years and 50 age-matched controls. We report data for all the SLI children (N = 45, IQ varying), as well as for two independent SLI subgroupings with intact IQ. One subgroup, "Pure SLI," had intact phonology and reading (N = 16), the other, "SLI PPR" (N = 15), had impaired phonology and reading. Problems with syllable stress and prosodic structure were found for all the group comparisons. Both sub-groups with intact IQ showed reduced sensitivity to ART in speech stimuli, but the PPR subgroup also showed reduced sensitivity to sound duration in speech stimuli. Individual differences in processing syllable stress were associated with auditory processing. These data support a new hypothesis, the "prosodic phrasing" hypothesis, which proposes that grammatical difficulties in SLI may reflect perceptual difficulties with global prosodic structure related to auditory impairments in processing amplitude rise time and duration.This project has been funded by the Nuffield Foundation.This is the final published version. It first appeared at http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00972/abstract

Awareness of Rhythm in SLI

Children with specific language impairments (SLIs) show impaired perception and production of language, and also show impairments in perceiving auditory cues to rhythm [amplitude rise time (ART) and sound duration] and in tapping to a rhythmic beat. Here we explore potential links between language development and rhythm perception in 45 children with SLI and 50 age-matched controls. We administered three rhythmic tasks, a musical beat detection task, a tapping-to-music task, and a novel music/speech task, which varied rhythm and pitch cues independently or together in both speech and music. Via low-pass filtering, the music sounded as though it was played from a low-quality radio and the speech sounded as though it was muffled (heard "behind the door"). We report data for all of the SLI children (N = 45, IQ varying), as well as for two independent subgroupings with intact IQ. One subgroup, "Pure SLI," had intact phonology and reading (N = 16), the other, "SLI PPR" (N = 15), had impaired phonology and reading. When IQ varied (all SLI children), we found significant group differences in all the rhythmic tasks. For the Pure SLI group, there were rhythmic impairments in the tapping task only. For children with SLI and poor phonology (SLI PPR), group differences were found in all of the filtered speech/music AXB tasks. We conclude that difficulties with rhythmic cues in both speech and music are present in children with SLIs, but that some rhythmic measures are more sensitive than others. The data are interpreted within a "prosodic phrasing" hypothesis, and we discuss the potential utility of rhythmic and musical interventions in remediating speech and language difficulties in children.This project has been funded by the Nuffield Foundation, but the views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Foundation.This is the final version of the article. It was first available from Frontiers via http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.0067

Perception of Filtered Speech by Children with Developmental Dyslexia and Children with Specific Language Impairments.

Here we use two filtered speech tasks to investigate children's processing of slow (<4 Hz) versus faster (∼33 Hz) temporal modulations in speech. We compare groups of children with either developmental dyslexia (Experiment 1) or speech and language impairments (SLIs, Experiment 2) to groups of typically-developing (TD) children age-matched to each disorder group. Ten nursery rhymes were filtered so that their modulation frequencies were either low-pass filtered (<4 Hz) or band-pass filtered (22 - 40 Hz). Recognition of the filtered nursery rhymes was tested in a picture recognition multiple choice paradigm. Children with dyslexia aged 10 years showed equivalent recognition overall to TD controls for both the low-pass and band-pass filtered stimuli, but showed significantly impaired acoustic learning during the experiment from low-pass filtered targets. Children with oral SLIs aged 9 years showed significantly poorer recognition of band pass filtered targets compared to their TD controls, and showed comparable acoustic learning effects to TD children during the experiment. The SLI samples were also divided into children with and without phonological difficulties. The children with both SLI and phonological difficulties were impaired in recognizing both kinds of filtered speech. These data are suggestive of impaired temporal sampling of the speech signal at different modulation rates by children with different kinds of developmental language disorder. Both SLI and dyslexic samples showed impaired discrimination of amplitude rise times. Implications of these findings for a temporal sampling framework for understanding developmental language disorders are discussed.Medical Research Council (Grant ID: G0400574)This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Frontiers via http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.0079