Setting up Language: Brain waves, oscillations and precise timing impact early acoustic mapping

Ongoing research in my laboratory provides evidence that the ability to perform fine-grained acoustic analysis in the tens of millisecond range during infancy appears to be one of the most powerful and significant predictors of subsequent language development and disorders.

In this lecture, a brief summary will be given of studies that demonstrate that difficulties in discriminating rapidly successive sensory events early in infancy are predictive of later language outcome. Then selected data from converging paradigms, specifically dense-array EEG and evoked-response potentials (ERPs), structural and functional MRI, and behavioral assessment will be presented.

Speaker: April Benasich