Back

Auditory tract maturation in early infancy: Links to speech production

Liu, F.; Wang, Y.; Gu, J.; Liu, J.; Cai, X.; Zhang, H.; Feng, J.; Wang, Z.; Wu, H.; Shen, D.

2025-01-01 neuroscience
10.1101/2024.12.31.630971 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Infants exhibit remarkable language acquisition abilities, supported by highly plastic neural substrates that dynamically interact with early speech experiences. However, the developmental mechanisms of these neural substrates and their specific role in speech acquisition remain incompletely understood. Here, we present NeoAudi Tract (NAT), a robust automated toolbox for extracting the full set of auditory tracts in infants from birth to 24 months using 3T diffusion MRI data. By characterizing the microstructural changes in these tracts, we demonstrate a gradual and continuous maturation process of the auditory system. Additionally, we identify significant correlations between auditory tract maturation and both fine-motor skills and expressive language t-scores from the Mullen Scales of Early Learning tests. Our findings highlight the role of the auditory system in speech production and indicate the intertwined development of auditory and motor systems that underlies speech acquisition, particularly during perceptual reorganization.

Matching journals

The top 5 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.