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Bilateral Neural Efficiency in Lexical Tone Learning: Evidence from sEEG

Poster Session D - Monday, March 9, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Yixiang Liu¹, Hao Zhu¹, Chen Yao², Junxi Chen³, Xing Tian⁴, Xiangbin Teng⁵, Patrick CM Wong^1,6; ¹Brain and Mind Institute, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong SAR, China, ²Department of Neurosurgery, Shenzhen Second People’s Hospital, The First Affiliated Hospital of Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China, ³Epilepsy Center, Guangdong Sanjiu Brain Hospital, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China., ⁴NYU-ECNU Institute of Brain and Cognitive Science at NYU Shanghai, Shanghai, China, ⁵Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong SAR, China, ⁶Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong SAR, China

A dual stream model of language processing postulates that while spectrotemporal cues of spoken language are processed bilaterally, lexical-semantic processes and linguistically relevant articulatory features are left-dominant, respectively subserved by the ventral and dorsal streams. Investigation of lexical tone learning is particularly interesting as it affords the opportunity to evaluate whether left lateralization occurs as a result of learning to integrate pitch into lexically relevant units. In a 3-day learning paradigm, nine treatment-resistant epileptic patients learned to map novel tonal syllables onto pseudowords with assigned meanings while undergoing stereo-electroencephalography (sEEG). Each day, participants completed two sessions of a three-stage task: exposure (encoding of sounds to form meaningful word associations), retrieval practice with feedback, and testing without feedback. Participants improved significantly across the three days. Electrodes showing a significant increase in high-gamma activity (HGA) after sound onset were chosen as responsive contacts. Using representational similarity analysis (RSA), we identified widespread sound-encoding contacts covering bilateral auditory regions and left putamen, defined by an increase in representational distance of HGA across tone patterns from Day 1 to Day 3. Correct trials showed a significant reduction of HGA in left superior temporal gyrus (STG) and right Heschl’s gyrus compared to incorrect trials. Furthermore, connectivity decreased in bilateral STG-insula, right STG-putamen and left STG-middle temporal gyrus (MTG) during exposure and testing, suggesting more efficient encoding and reduced retrieval efforts in lexical tone learning. While lending support to components of the dual stream model, the results provide additional insights into processing efficiency during language learning.

Topic Area: LANGUAGE: Semantic