A cross-linguistic PET study of tone perception in mandarin Chinese and English speakers

PET was used in a cross-linguistic study to determine whether neural mechan isms subserving pitch perception differ as a function of linguistic relevan ce. We compared tone perception in 12 native Mandarin speakers, who use ton al patterns to distinguish lexical meaning, with that of 12 native speakers of a nontone language, English. Subjects were scanned under two conditions : a silent resting baseline and a tonal task involving discrimination of pi tch patterns in Mandarin words. Both groups showed common regions of CBF in crease, but only Mandarin speakers showed additional activation in frontal, parietal, and parietooccipital regions of the left hemisphere; this latter finding indicates that language experience may influence brain circuitry i n the processing of auditory cues. In contrast, only the English group show ed activity in the right inferior frontal cortex, consistent with a right-h emispheric role in pitch perception. (C) 2001 Academic Press.