Grant: Operating Grant

The perception and acquisition of language and music depend critically on developing efficient brain networks for complex sound processing. The research in this proposal examines the brain's response to sound in infants and children. The auditory system has evolved to respond to change, whether the onset of a new sound that could signal, for example, a dangerous predator, or a change in a sound, for example signaling emotion in a voice. During the previous grant period we discovered that the cortical response to a change in a sound feature (e.g., pitch, timing or location) undergoes a radical development during early infancy. Here we apply this knowledge to study the development of (1) pitch processing, including pitch patterns as found in speech intonation and melodies, (2) "auditory scene analysis", whereby infants learn to process the sounds from more than one object at the same time, (3) the effects of learning and specific experience with sounds on brain development, and (4) the development of oscillatory brain activity that reflects attention and memory processes. The proposed studies examine aspects of complex auditory processing that are critical for the acquisition of language and music. Only by understanding these mechanisms will we be able to understand why language and music do not develop optimally in certain special populations.