Effects of Personalized Prosodic Sentences and Isomorphic Melodies on Children's Brain Activity

Abstract

This study examined the effects of personalized speech and melodic stimuli on brain activity in 19 children using a within-subject quasi-experimental design and single-channel EEG. Participants listened to prosodic sentences and isomorphic melodies mimicking prosodic features. Gamma, alpha, and theta activity were compared across conditions. No significant differences were found in alpha (Z = −0.322, p = 0.748) or theta (Z = −1.328, p = 0.184), while gamma activity was significantly lower during melody than prosody (Z = −2.133, p = 0.033, r = 0.49). The findings suggest partially overlapping neural processing of speech and music, with higher gamma activity during prosody indicating greater demands for integrating acoustic and linguistic information.