Tamar Regev

Thank you!

It's an interesting question and I don't know! I would hypothesize that they mature earlier though because babies can perceive prosody but not yet language

💡In sum, prosody 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗮𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗻𝗼𝗻-𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗯𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗮𝗹𝘀: face/body/hand/voice gestures separate from language areas (Deen 2015; Pritchett 2018; Jouravlev 2019), but prosody engages them—likely because it always co-occurs with speech and shares much information with verbal content. 14/

📚 Together, these profiles show that prosody processing occupies a 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗰𝘁 𝗳𝘂𝗻𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗵𝗲 in the human brain, while maintaining tight links with verbal language processing and the processing of dynamic facial cues. 13/

🙂𝗥𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁 𝟱:
Prosody areas are separable but partly overlapping with 𝗱𝘆𝗻𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗰 𝗳𝗮𝗰𝗲 perception areas. This overlap may reflect the need to integrate prosody with other non-verbal communication signals. 12/

🗣️ Interestingly, the dominant LH lang areas are mainly sensitive to prosody when verbal content is absent. For sentences, responses are already high without prosody, but for nonwords, prosody plausibly helps extract some information (perhaps related to sentence structure). 11/

—> which is also supported by our recent computational work! (with @wegotlieb.bsky.social @alexwarstadt.bsky.social @tpimentel.bsky.social tinyurl.com/m8cpmm2j, tinyurl.com/yc42n3cc). 10/

🗣️ 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁 𝟰:
Prosody areas are separable but partly overlap with 𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗴𝘂𝗮𝗴𝗲 areas (syntax+semantics). This suggests a strong link between prosodic and verbal processing —> 9/

🧩 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁 𝟯:
Prosody areas are distinct from 𝗺𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗲-𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗱 (𝗠𝗗) cognitive regions in both response profiles and fine-grained voxel activation patterns. Thus, prosody responses are not driven by effort or general attention. 8/

🎵 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁 𝟮:
Prosody areas are distinct from 𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗰𝗵 and 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗲𝗰𝗵 perception areas, differing in both response profiles and fine-grained voxel activation patterns measured using spatial correlations. Thus, prosody sensitivity cannot be explained by basic auditory responses. 7/

📍 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁 𝟭: A bilateral set of temporal+frontal areas responded robustly to prosody in both sentences and nonwords. Interestingly, these areas were also modulated by verbal content (sentences>nonwords). The temporal areas showed generalization to other, natural stimuli. 6/

🎧 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗼𝗱𝘆 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗽𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻:
To remove sentence-level prosody (pitch+timing), we compared naturally produced expressive sentences with versions of the same sentences where each word was recorded separately and spliced. Matched nonword stimuli used the same manipulation. 5/

🎯 We used 𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗳𝗠𝗥𝗜 𝗳𝘂𝗻𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗹𝗼𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. 51 participants completed tasks targeting prosody, pitch, speech, general attention, language, and social perception—allowing direct comparisons within individuals. 4/

📉 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗿 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 found prosody-responsive areas, but two issues limit interpretation:
1. Low spatial precision (lesion studies, group-average fMRI, EEG, MEG).
2. Lack of direct comparisons between prosody and other nearby systems.
3/

🧠𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗶𝘀 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗼𝗱𝘆 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻?
Are there areas specialized for prosody, or is prosodic information handled by other systems—auditory pitch/speech areas, cognitive control areas, the language network (Fedorenko et al. 2024), or social perception areas? 2/

🔍𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗼𝗱𝘆?
The pattern of pitch, loudness, and tempo that overlays speech. Prosody can signal whether an utterance is a statement or a question, highlight important words, and covey affect. It is crucial for communication and language learning. 1/

A distinct set of brain areas process prosody--the melody of speech Human speech carries information beyond the words themselves: pitch, loudness, duration, and pauses--jointly referred to as 'prosody'--emphasize critical words, help group words into phrases, and conv...

New preprint on prosody in the brain!
tinyurl.com/2ndswjwu
HeeSoKim NiharikaJhingan SaraSwords @hopekean.bsky.social @coltoncasto.bsky.social JenniferCole @evfedorenko.bsky.social

Prosody areas are distinct from pitch, speech, and multiple-demand areas, and partly overlap with lang+social areas→🧵

Using Information Theory to Characterize Prosodic Typology: The Case of Tone, Pitch-Accent and Stress-Accent This paper argues that the relationship between lexical identity and prosody -- one well-studied parameter of linguistic variation -- can be characterized using information theory. We predict that lan...

⭐🗣️New preprint out: 🗣️⭐ “Using Information Theory to Characterize Prosodic Typology: The Case of Tone, Pitch-Accent and Stress-Accent” with @cuiding.bsky.social , Giovanni Acampa, @tpimentel.bsky.social , @alexwarstadt.bsky.social ,Tamar Regev: arxiv.org/abs/2505.07659

Inline citations with only first author name, or first two co-first author names.

If you're finishing your camera-ready for ACL or ICML and want to cite co-first authors more fairly, I just made a simple fix to do this! Just add $^*$ to the authors' names in your bibtex, and the citations should change :)

github.com/tpimentelms/...