Complementary hemispheric specialization for word and accent detection

Abstract

When we hear a familiar word pronounced in a foreign accent, which parts of the brain identify the word and which identify the accent? Here we present converging evidence from PET blood flow, event-related scalp potentials, and behavioral responses during dichotic listening, showing homologous and complementary hemispheric specialization for word and accent detection. Accuracy of detecting target words was greater when stimuli were presented to the right ear, indicating left hemisphere specialization, with no ear advantage for detecting target accents. Detection of words also produced increased blood flow in a left frontal area associated with motor and phonetic processing, and a left temporal area associated with semantic memory. Homologous areas of the right hemisphere, together with right prefrontal and precuneus regions, showed increased blood flow during detection of accents. Separate analyses for each detection task indicated that voxels whose activity maximally correlated with accuracy were in the left hemisphere for word detection, but in the right hemisphere for accent detection. Voxels whose activity maximally correlated with inaccuracy were in the opposite hemisphere for both tasks, strengthening the interpretation that between-task differences in brain activation are related to lateralized specializations for task performance. ERP waveforms and reaction times suggested that greater left hemisphere activation during word detection preceded greater right hemisphere activation during accent detection. The results are interpreted as supporting left hemisphere specialization for extraction of the linguistic, phonetic, and semantic information contained in speech, and right hemisphere specialization for pragmatics, the social context of linguistic communication.