Speech Perception under the Tent: A Domain-general Predictive Role for the Cerebellum

Abstract

The role of the cerebellum in speech perception remains a mystery. Given its uniform architecture, we tested the hypothesis that it implements a domain-general mechanism whose role in speech is determined by connectivity. We collated all neuroimaging studies reporting cerebellar activity in the Neurosynth database (n = 8206). From this set, we found all studies involving passive speech and sound perception (n = 72, 64% speech, 12.5% sounds, 12.5% music, and 11% tones) and speech production and articulation (n = 175). Standard and coactivation neuroimaging meta-analyses were used to compare cerebellar and associated cortical activations between passive perception and production. We found distinct regions of perception- and production-related activity in the cerebellum and regions of perception–production overlap. Each of these regions had distinct patterns of cortico-cerebellar connectivity. To test for domain-generality versus specificity, we identified all psychological and task-related terms in the Neurosynth database that predicted activity in cerebellar regions associated with passive perception and production. Regions in the cerebellum activated by speech perception were associated with domain-general terms related to prediction. One hallmark of predictive processing is metabolic savings (i.e., decreases in neural activity when events are predicted). To test the hypothesis that the cerebellum plays a predictive role in speech perception, we examined cortical activation between studies reporting cerebellar activation and those without cerebellar activation during speech perception. When the cerebellum was active during speech perception, there was far less cortical activation than when it was inactive. The results suggest that the cerebellum implements a domain-general mechanism related to prediction during speech perception.

The processing of stress in a foreign language modulates functional antagonism between default mode and attention network regions

“…Altogether, these structures contribute to higher cognitions not limited to speech but comprising domain-general sequence processing and salience detection as well as executive functions including working memory (Cona and Semenza, 2017; Fedorenko and Blank, 2020; Igelström and Graziano, 2017; Singh-Curry and Husain, 2009; Uddin, 2015; Uddin et al, 2017; Wager and Smith, 2003). Our stress-contrasts further highlight the bilateral involvement of auditory-processing cortical areas (i.e., STG, MTG (Domahs et al, 2013; Heisterueber et al, 2014; Honbolygó et al, 2020; Kandylaki et al, 2017; Klein et al, 2011)) and of speech-contributing subcortical structures belonging to the cerebellum, thalamus and basal ganglia (Silveri, 2021; Skipper and Lametti, 2021). By contrast, the participants required less cognitive load for processing vowel, as evident by a better performance in discriminating vowels in foreign word pairs and by the lack of activation across the fronto-insular and temporal region.…”

“…CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license perpetuity. It is made available under a preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in The copyright holder for this this version posted December 21, 2022. ; https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.12.21.521156 doi: bioRxiv preprint 13 involvement of auditory-processing cortical areas (i.e., STG, MTG (Domahs et al, 2013;Heisterueber et al, 2014;Honbolygó et al, 2020;Kandylaki et al, 2017;Klein et al, 2011)) and of speech-contributing subcortical structures belonging to the cerebellum, thalamus and basal ganglia (Silveri, 2021;Skipper and Lametti, 2021). By contrast, the participants required less cognitive load for processing vowel, as evident by a better performance in discriminating vowels in foreign word pairs and by the lack of activation across the frontoinsular and temporal region.…”

The emergence of language in the human mind and brain—Insights from the neurobiology of language, thought and action.

“…10 cerebellar regions, which research has shown play a modality-general role in the selective and predictive aspects of speech, respectively (Skipper & Lametti, 2021;Tremblay & Gracco, 2010), as well as primary and secondary auditory cortices, which have been studied for their capacity to integrate speech auditory segments of increasing length (syllables, words, phrases, sentences, etc., cf. Dehaene & Cohen, 2007; see also Overath et al, 2015).…”

The cerebellum is sensitive to the lexical properties of words during spoken language comprehension

“…This theoretical perspective has driven work dedicated to specifying, in more detail, cerebellar contributions to higher-order and non-motor processes associated with spoken language comprehension (Bonhage et al, 2015;Geva et al, 2021;Kuperberg & Jaeger, 2016;Moberget & Ivry, 2016). The cerebellum is evidenced to have some functional diversity in nonmotor language-related tasks (Desmond et al, 1997;Desmond & Fiez, 1998;D'Mello et al, 2017;Durisko & Fiez, 2010;Moberget & Ivry, 2016;Stoodley et al, 2012a;van Dun et al, 2016), inspiring calls to determine a potential cerebellar system perhaps comprised of one or multiple adaptable mechanisms, that contribute to language processing (Argyropoulos, 2016b;Ito, 2005Ito, , 2008aMoberget & Ivry, 2016;Skipper & Lametti, 2021aSokolov et al, 2017). If the cerebellum's multi-faceted functions recruit spatially segregated regions, then characterizing its contributions to higher-order language processes, can be informed by more precisely defining the specific loci for processing the basic properties of language, including the different lexical properties for words that listeners hear.…”

“…A critical affordance of internal models, both for motor and cognitive domains, is the ability to predict what will happen next and to calculate prediction errors that capture the unexpected (Ito, 2008b). An increasing number of empirical studies have tested this hypothesis as it pertains to language and the cerebellum (Guediche et al, 2015;Lesage et al, 2012Lesage et al, , 2016Moberget et al, 2014a) prompting a number of review articles on the topic (e.g., Skipper & Lametti, 2021b). Another proposed role for the cerebellum has to do with semantic integration; focal disruption of the right posterior cerebellum interrupts judgments on the semantic relatedness of word pairs (Gatti et al, 2020).…”