HealthOnTrack

Posts Tagged ‘brain processing’

Animals and humans share the property of creating various sounds that come about through the vibrational frequencies generated from the vocal chords. Brain processing of these sounds occurs as a response to the varying frequency changes caused by changes in vocal pitch. Determining where and how the brain starts processing these different frequencies has always been a challenge to scientists. The frequency changes are known as frequency-modulated sweeps (FM) and in order to understand behaviours relating to hearing and speech, the more we know about the behaviour of these sweeps, the better.

At the California Institute of Technology two biologists have solved the mystery of the location and manner in which brain processing functions with respect to these types of signals. A true breakthrough in acoustic technology, the findings of this research has a large impact in deciphering the meaning of words, through better understanding of FM sweeps. The dipping or rising of these sweeps most prominently affects languages where such changes can actually alter the meaning one word. Mandarin Chinese is a good example of this.  Read more... (404 words, 1 image, estimated 1:37 mins reading time)