Neural oscillations track natural but not artificial fast speech: Novel insights from speech-brain coupling using MEG

Casas, Ana Sofía Hincapié; Lajnef, Tarek; Pascarella, Annalisa; Guiraud-Vinatea, Hélène; Laaksonen, Hannu; Bayle, Dimitri J.; Jerbi, Karim; Boulenger, Véronique

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118577

Cited by 13 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 91 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…However, our tasks were more challenging due to extra noise masking, which might urge the dLMC engagement. Overall, previous studies have reported that the right motor cortex entrains speech stream 60 and is involved in auditory-speech coupling 61 resembling its left counterpart, and we provide new evidence for its engagement in the perception of lower-level phonemic cues.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 74%

“…Studies have reported that neural oscillations in bilateral frontoparietal cortices couple with the left auditory cortex in speech perception (Park et al, 2015). Besides, particularly for the motor cortex, the right LMC is essential in detecting human voice (Lévêque et al, 2013), and the right motor cortex entrains speech (Hincapié Casas et al, 2021) and is involved in auditory-speech coupling (Keitel et al, 2017) resembling its left counterpart. Similarly, in the current study, we showed that despite the general left-lateralization, the right LMC was essential in both lexical tone and consonant perception in noisy conditions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Bilateral Human Laryngeal Motor Cortex in Perceptual Decision of Lexical Tone and Voicing of Consonant

Liang

Zhao

et al. 2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

To achieve categorical speech perception, listeners can actively reconstruct motor gestures of the upcoming speech. This is supported by sensorimotor integration function of the dorsal pathway where the "internal models" of articulations implement top-down constraints on auditory speech analyses in the ventral pathway. Moreover, the motor engagement in speech perception is effector-specific, resembling the motor somatotopy during speech production. However, whether and how the laryngeal motor cortex (LMC), which controls the laryngeal muscles that regulate pitch contours and speech voicing, is also involved in speech perception remains largely unknown. To address this question, this study applied transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) upon the left or right LMC when participants performed categorical perception tasks on Mandarin lexical tone (pitch contour contrast) or consonant (voice onset time contrast) presented with or without noise. Results showed that, inhibitory stimulation (repetitive TMS or continuous theta-burst stimulation) on the LMC impaired both tone and consonant perception. Furthermore, TMS effects were especially evident when syllables were masked by noise. These results reveal a causal role of the LMC in speech perception that (1) it mirrors its distinctive functions in controlling pitch and voicing during production and (2) it is upregulated and shifts from a left-lateralized to a bilateral engagement in adverse listening conditions as a means of compensation. This study thus provides new evidence to support the motor theory of speech perception, and more generally, active perception and embodied cognition.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 74%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bilateral Human Laryngeal Motor Cortex in Perceptual Decision of Lexical Tone and Voicing of Consonant

Liang

Zhao

et al. 2022

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In contrast, theta dynamics more closely resembles typical auditory activity (Bourguignon et al, 2018;Zuk et al, 2021). A somewhat different result was obtained by Hincapié Casas et al (2021), who used MEG to measure neural activity aligned to speech sentences spoken at a fast rate (nine syllables/s) and compared it with that to sentences spoken at a slower rate, but time-compressed to the fast rate. This time-compressed speech was not only significantly less intelligible than natural speech; it also did not entrain neural activity-in contrast to naturally fast speech that produced a reliable alignment between MEG signal and speech rhythm.…”

Section: Speech-specific Neural Dynamicsmentioning

confidence: 87%

“…phrase, syllable, phoneme) is constrained to its typical ( eigenfrequency ) range. Indeed, speech understanding drops if word rate exceeds 4–5 Hz (Carver, 1973), or when the syllabic rate is above ~8–10 Hz (Ahissar et al, 2001; Ghitza & Greenberg, 2009; Hincapié Casas et al, 2021). Interestingly, comprehension of time‐compressed, unintelligible speech is recovered if silent gaps are introduced between syllables (without slowing the time‐compressed syllables themselves), suggesting that the restoration of a typical syllabic rate is key to successful speech perception (Ghitza & Greenberg, 2009).…”

Section: Properties Of Neural Dynamics In the Auditory System (And Be...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural tracking of continuous acoustics: properties, speech‐specificity and open questions

Zoefel,

Kösem

2023

Eur J of Neuroscience

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Human speech is a particularly relevant acoustic stimulus for our species, due to its role of information transmission during communication. Speech is inherently a dynamic signal, and a recent line of research focused on neural activity following the temporal structure of speech. We review findings that characterise neural dynamics in the processing of continuous acoustics and that allow us to compare these dynamics with temporal aspects in human speech. We highlight properties and constraints that both neural and speech dynamics have, suggesting that auditory neural systems are optimised to process human speech. We then discuss the speech‐specificity of neural dynamics and their potential mechanistic origins and summarise open questions in the field.

show abstract

“…In the cortex, the timescale of neural oscillations may be related to linguistic processing (e.g., Greenberg, 1999 ; Ghitza and Greenberg, 2009 ; Giraud and Poeppel, 2012 ; Peelle and Davis, 2012 ) since individual neurons can adapt to small changes in the rate of speech (e.g., Lerner et al, 2014 ). In addition, neural oscillations may adapt better to naturally rapid speech than to time-compressed speech (e.g., Hincapié Casas et al, 2021 ). A measure of the accuracy of a listener’s neurons to track acoustic modulation in speech may better predict performance on time-compressed speech than measures of cognition.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The recognition of time-compressed speech as a function of age in listeners with cochlear implants or normal hearing

Tinnemore

Montero²,

Gordon‐Salant³

et al. 2022

Front. Aging Neurosci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Speech recognition is diminished when a listener has an auditory temporal processing deficit. Such deficits occur in listeners over 65 years old with normal hearing (NH) and with age-related hearing loss, but their source is still unclear. These deficits may be especially apparent when speech occurs at a rapid rate and when a listener is mostly reliant on temporal information to recognize speech, such as when listening with a cochlear implant (CI) or to vocoded speech (a CI simulation). Assessment of the auditory temporal processing abilities of adults with CIs across a wide range of ages should better reveal central or cognitive sources of age-related deficits with rapid speech because CI stimulation bypasses much of the cochlear encoding that is affected by age-related peripheral hearing loss. This study used time-compressed speech at four different degrees of time compression (0, 20, 40, and 60%) to challenge the auditory temporal processing abilities of younger, middle-aged, and older listeners with CIs or with NH. Listeners with NH were presented vocoded speech at four degrees of spectral resolution (unprocessed, 16, 8, and 4 channels). Results showed an interaction between age and degree of time compression. The reduction in speech recognition associated with faster rates of speech was greater for older adults than younger adults. The performance of the middle-aged listeners was more similar to that of the older listeners than to that of the younger listeners, especially at higher degrees of time compression. A measure of cognitive processing speed did not predict the effects of time compression. These results suggest that central auditory changes related to the aging process are at least partially responsible for the auditory temporal processing deficits seen in older listeners, rather than solely peripheral age-related changes.

show abstract

Neural oscillations track natural but not artificial fast speech: Novel insights from speech-brain coupling using MEG

Cited by 13 publications

References 91 publications

Bilateral Human Laryngeal Motor Cortex in Perceptual Decision of Lexical Tone and Voicing of Consonant

Bilateral Human Laryngeal Motor Cortex in Perceptual Decision of Lexical Tone and Voicing of Consonant

Neural tracking of continuous acoustics: properties, speech‐specificity and open questions

The recognition of time-compressed speech as a function of age in listeners with cochlear implants or normal hearing

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About