Examining the neuroanatomical and the behavioural basis of the effect of basic rhythm on reading aloud

ABSTRACT

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the brain regions associated with the effect of congruency between rhythmic stress and syllabic stress on reading aloud (Gould et al., 2016). The region of particular interest was the putamen, which has been shown to be involved in speech processing, rhythm processing, and predicting upcoming events. The task involved naming words that placed the stress on either the first or second syllable (practice versus police), as well as their corresponding pseudohomophones (praktis versus poleese) that were preceded by either a congruent or incongruent rhythmic prime. The fMRI results revealed that a network involving the putamen is involved, and the behavioural results demonstrated that a rhythmic prime matched to the syllabic stress aids reading processes of both words and PHs. Implications for neurobiological models of reading, as well as clinical applications (e.g. speech rehabilitation in Parkinson’s disease) are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• FMRI
• reading aloud
• rhythm priming
• syllabic stress
• putamen

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The same analyses were conducted by-items, and the results were consistent with the by-subject analyses (i.e. each main effect and interaction in the by-items analyses led to the same conclusion as the by-subjects analyses).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada in the form of NSERC Canada Graduate Scholarships to the lead author, L. Gould, and C. Ekstrand, NSERC summer research scholarships to E. Lorentz, the Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation through a Post-Doctoral Fellowship to Marla Mickleborough, and an NSERC Discovery Grant to the senior author, R. Borowsky under [grant number 183968-2013-18].