Individual differences in second language (L2) phoneme perception (within the normal population) have been related to/nspeech perception abilities, also observed in the native language, in studies assessing the electrophysiological response/nmismatch negativity (MMN). Here, we investigate the brain oscillatory dynamics in the theta band, the spectral correlate of/nthe MMN, that underpin success in phoneme learning. Using previous data obtained in an MMN paradigm, the dynamics of/ncortical oscillations while perceiving native and unknown phonemes and nonlinguistic stimuli were studied in two groups/nof participants classified as good and poor perceivers (GPs and PPs), according to their L2 phoneme discrimination abilities./nThe results showed that for GPs, as compared to PPs, processing of a native phoneme change produced a significant/nincrease in theta power. Stimulus time-locked analysis event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP) showed differences for the/ntheta band within the MMN time window (between 70 and 240 ms) for the native deviant phoneme. No other significant/ndifference between the two groups was observed for the other phoneme or nonlinguistic stimuli. The dynamic patterns in/nthe theta-band may reflect early automatic change detection for familiar speech sounds in the brain. The behavioral/ndifferences between the two groups may reflect individual variations in activating brain circuits at a perceptual level.

This research was supported by grants from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013): ERG grant agreement number 323961, the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (PSI 2012 - 34071), and the Catalan Government (SGR 2009-1521) to N. Sebastián-Gallés, and the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union’sSeventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under REA grant agreement n° 328671 to B. Díaz. N. Sebastián-Gallés received the “ICREA Acadèmia” Prize for Excellence in Research, funded by the Generalitat de Catalunya. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.