Biology subjects

Olson, H. A.

Publications and source records attributed to Olson, H. A..

6 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

The language network does not support music perception across a range of music experience

Music and language share many similarities, yet music does not elicit a response in the language brain areas in adults with typical amounts of music experience, and patients with aphasia show preserved music ability. However, this dissociation might not generalize across development or expertise: it may not yet be present in children, who have limited experience with language and music, or it may be diminished in musicians with extensive music training. To evaluate these possibilities, we here used a precision fMRI approach to examine the responses in the language areas of children (aged 4-16 years, n=80) and adult musicians (n=10) to music. We found that the results obtained previously for non-musician adults replicate in two new control samples and, critically, generalize to both of the newly tested populations: the language areas are already selective for language relative to music in young children, showing no age-related change from early to late childhood, and remain selective despite extensive music training in highly experienced musicians. Thus, it appears that the amount of music exposure and practice have little effect on how the language brain areas respond to music.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2026

The emergence of the language system in the toddler brain

Toddlerhood is a time when childrens language competence undergoes a dramatic transformation, making it a key period to examine the emergence of the brains language system. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data from 29 awake toddlers (19-36 months) scanned on a child-friendly language task reveal that, already at this young age, areas in the left frontal and temporal cortex respond more to comprehensible language (i.e., videos of puppets speaking in English) than the control condition (matched videos with incomprehensible audio). Although the magnitude of response to language is substantially weaker than in adults, the topography is already adult-like, challenging claims that the frontal component or left-hemispheric dominance do not emerge until later in life.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

Incorporating special interests to investigate the language system in autism: A feasibility pilot fMRI study

Most autistic individuals have sustained, focused interests in particular topics or activities. In some cases, these special interests have been shown to motivate communicative behaviors, a domain in which many autistic individuals experience challenges. We conducted a pilot study with 15 autistic children (ages 8.18 - 13.27 years, mean(SD)= 11.17(1.62), 3 female/11 male/1 nonbinary), comparing brain responses elicited by short narratives tailored to individuals special interests to responses elicited by generic, non-tailored narratives. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we found that autistic children did not show typical language responses to generic narratives. However, they did show heightened responses to the narratives that incorporated their special interests relative to the generic narratives in language regions and in regions associated with reward and self-reference. Brain responses for personalized narratives were also more consistent across children than responses for the generic narratives. These results suggest that personalizing stimuli by incorporating special interests might be a promising approach for neuroimaging in autistic participants. LAY SUMMARYIn a pilot sample of autistic children, we found that listening to short narratives tailored to each childs special interest elicited higher responses in the brain than listening to non-personalized narratives. Brain responses across children were also more similar for the special interest narratives. Thus, personalizing stimuli to special interests may be a promising approach for neuroimaging studies of autism.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2025

Data retention in awake infant fMRI: Lessons from more than 750 scanning sessions

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in awake infants has the potential to reveal how the early developing brain gives rise to cognition and behavior. However, awake infant fMRI poses significant methodological challenges that have hampered wider adoption. The present work takes stock after the collection of a substantial amount of awake infant fMRI data across multiple studies from two labs at different institutions. These data were leveraged to glean insights on participant recruitment, experimental design, and data acquisition that could be useful to consider for future studies. Across 766 fMRI sessions with awake infants aged 1-36 months, the authors explored the factors that influenced how much usable data were obtained per session. The age of an infant predicted whether they would successfully enter the scanner (younger more likely) and, if they did enter, the number of minutes of functional data collected (linear, younger more) and retained after preprocessing with lab-specific protocols or harmonized motion exclusion thresholds (quadratic, 12-24 months more than younger and older). The amount of functional data retained was also influenced by assigned sex (female more), experimental paradigm (movies better than blocks and events), and stimulus content (social better than abstract). There were many differences in the research approach between labs making head-to-head comparisons difficult, but Yale was more likely to get infants into the scanner, MIT collected more data from infants who entered, and the amount of data retained after preprocessing did not differ statistically between labs (9 minutes). In addition, the authors assessed the value of attempting to collect multiple experiments per session, an approach that yielded more than one usable experiment averaging across all sessions. Although any given scan is unpredictable, these findings support the feasibility of awake infant fMRI and suggest practices to optimize future research.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Personal interests amplify engagement of language regions in the brains of children with and without autism

Cognition is shaped by individual experiences and interests. However, to study cognition in the brain, researchers typically use generic stimuli that are the same across all individuals. Language, in particular, is animated and motivated by several highly personal factors that are typically not accounted for in neuroimaging study designs, such as "interest" in a topic. Due to its inherently personal and idiosyncratic nature, it is unknown how interest in a topic modulates language processing in the brain. We conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in 20 children (ages 6.98-12.01 years, mean(SD)=9.35(1.52), 5 female/15 male) as they listened to personalized narratives about a topic of specific interest, as well as to non-personalized generic narratives. We found that personalized narratives about a topic of interest increased activation in canonical language areas, as well as in reward and self-reference regions. Strikingly, we found that activation patterns elicited by topics of personal interest were more consistent across children, despite their idiosyncratic nature, than activation patterns elicited by narratives about an identical generic topic. These results reinforce the critical role that personal interests play in language processing in the human brain, and demonstrate the feasibility of using a personalized neuroimaging approach to study the effects of individually-varying factors such as interest in the brain.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Left-hemisphere cortical language regions respond equally to dialogue and monologue

Much of the language we encounter in our everyday lives comes in the form of conversation, yet the majority of research on the neural basis of language comprehension has used input from only one speaker at a time. 20 adults were scanned while passively observing audiovisual conversations using functional magnetic resonance imaging. In a block-design task, participants watched 20-second videos of puppets speaking either to another puppet (the "dialogue" condition) or directly to the viewer ("monologue"), while the audio was either comprehensible (played forward) or incomprehensible (played backward). Individually functionally-localized left-hemisphere language regions responded more to comprehensible than incomprehensible speech but did not respond differently to dialogue than monologue. In a second task, participants watched videos (1-3 minutes each) of two puppets conversing with each other, in which one puppet was comprehensible while the others speech was reversed. All participants saw the same visual input but were randomly assigned which characters speech was comprehensible. In left-hemisphere cortical language regions, the timecourse of activity was correlated only among participants who heard the same character speaking comprehensibly, despite identical visual input across all participants. For comparison, some individually-localized theory of mind regions and right hemisphere homologues of language regions responded more to dialogue than monologue in the first task, and in the second task, activity in some regions was correlated across all participants regardless of which character was speaking comprehensibly. Together, these results suggest that canonical left-hemisphere cortical language regions are not sensitive to differences between observed dialogue and monologue.

neuroscience↗