Syllabic (∼2–5 Hz) and fluctuation (∼1–10 Hz) ranges in speech and auditory processing

Edwards, Erik; Chang, Edward F.

doi:10.1016/j.heares.2013.08.017

Cited by 72 publications

(62 citation statements)

References 175 publications

(310 reference statements)

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“…Together, these findings put forward the hypothesis that, in the human brain, even the properties of neuronal populations in early auditory cortical areas and the general purpose mechanisms involved in the analysis of any sound have been shaped by the characteristic acoustic properties of speech. This hypothesis is consistent with psychoacoustic investigations showing that human listeners have highest sensitivity in detecting temporal modulations changes in the range of 2-4 Hz, even when tested with broadband noise and tones (43,44). Finally, the tight link between these mechanisms and speech predicts that these properties are specific to the human brain, which could be tested by performing the same (fMRI) experiments and analyses in nonhuman species.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Reconstructing the spectrotemporal modulations of real-life sounds from fMRI response patterns

Santoro

Moerel

Martino

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

104

152

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Ethological views of brain functioning suggest that sound representations and computations in the auditory neural system are optimized finely to process and discriminate behaviorally relevant acoustic features and sounds (e.g., spectrotemporal modulations in the songs of zebra finches). Here, we show that modeling of neural sound representations in terms of frequency-specific spectrotemporal modulations enables accurate and specific reconstruction of real-life sounds from high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) response patterns in the human auditory cortex. Region-based analyses indicated that response patterns in separate portions of the auditory cortex are informative of distinctive sets of spectrotemporal modulations. Most relevantly, results revealed that in early auditory regions, and progressively more in surrounding regions, temporal modulations in a range relevant for speech analysis (∼2-4 Hz) were reconstructed more faithfully than other temporal modulations. In early auditory regions, this effect was frequency-dependent and only present for lower frequencies (<∼2 kHz), whereas for higher frequencies, reconstruction accuracy was higher for faster temporal modulations. Further analyses suggested that auditory cortical processing optimized for the fine-grained discrimination of speech and vocal sounds underlies this enhanced reconstruction accuracy. In sum, the present study introduces an approach to embed models of neural sound representations in the analysis of fMRI response patterns. Furthermore, it reveals that, in the human brain, even general purpose and fundamental neural processing mechanisms are shaped by the physical features of real-world stimuli that are most relevant for behavior (i.e., speech, voice).any natural and man-made sources in our environment produce acoustic waveforms (sounds) consisting of complex mixtures of multiple frequencies (Fig. 1A). At the cochlea, these waveforms are decomposed into frequency-specific temporal patterns of neural signals, typically described with auditory spectrograms (Fig. 1B). How complex sounds are further transformed and analyzed along the auditory neural pathway and in the cortex remains uncertain. Ethological considerations have led to the hypothesis that brain processing of sounds is optimized for spectrotemporal modulations, which are characteristically present in ecologically relevant sounds (1), such as in animal vocalizations [e.g., zebra finch (2), macaque monkeys (3)] and speech (2, 4-7). Modulations are regular variations of energy in time, in frequency, or in time and frequency simultaneously. Typically, in natural sounds, modulations dynamically change over time. The contribution of modulations to sound spectrograms can be made explicit using 4D (time-varying; Movies S1-S3, Left) or 3D (time-averaged; Fig. 1C) representations. Such representations highlight, for example, that the energy of human vocal sounds is mostly concentrated at lower frequencies and at lower temporal modulation rates (Fig. 1C, Left), whereas the...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Reconstructing the spectrotemporal modulations of real-life sounds from fMRI response patterns

Santoro

Moerel

Martino

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

104

152

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Based on this brief and selective summary, two concepts merit emphasis: first, the extended speech signal contains critical information that is modulated at rates below 20 Hz, with the modulation peaking around 5 Hz (Edwards and Chang, 2013). This low-frequency information correlates closely with the syllabic structure of connected speech (Hyafil et al, 2012).…”

Section: Timescales In Auditory Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Temporal coding in the auditory cortex

Arnal

Poeppel

Giraud³

2015

Handbook of Clinical Neurology

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“…expected, stimuli and mediate the alignment of endogenous neural activity to the regularities of structured sounds such as speech [23,24]. Indeed, the time scales of human perceptual sensitivity and the time scales at which rhythmic auditory activity shapes perception seem to be well matched [25,26].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence for the rhythmic perceptual sampling of auditory scenes

Kayser

2019

Preprint

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Converging results suggest that perception is controlled by rhythmic processes in the brain. In the auditory domain, neuroimaging studies show that the perception of brief sounds is shaped by rhythmic activity prior to the stimulus and electrophysiological recordings have linked delta band (1-2 Hz) activity to the functioning of individual neurons. These results have promoted theories of rhythmic modes of listening and generally suggest that the perceptually relevant encoding of acoustic information is structured by rhythmic processes along auditory pathways. A prediction from this perspective ̶ which so far has not been tested ̶ is that such rhythmic processes also shape how acoustic information is combined over time to judge extended soundscapes. The present study was designed to directly test this prediction. Human participants judged the overall change in perceived frequency content in temporally extended (1.2 to 1.8 s) soundscapes, while the perceptual use of the available sensory evidence was quantified using psychophysical reverse correlation. Model-based analysis of individual participant's perceptual weights revealed a rich temporal structure, including linear trends, a Ushaped profile tied to the overall stimulus duration, and importantly, rhythmic components at the time scale of 1 to 2Hz. The collective evidence found here across four versions of the experiment supports the notion that rhythmic processes operating on the delta band time scale structure how perception samples temporally extended acoustic scenes.

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Syllabic (∼2–5 Hz) and fluctuation (∼1–10 Hz) ranges in speech and auditory processing

Cited by 72 publications

References 175 publications

Reconstructing the spectrotemporal modulations of real-life sounds from fMRI response patterns

Reconstructing the spectrotemporal modulations of real-life sounds from fMRI response patterns

Temporal coding in the auditory cortex

Evidence for the rhythmic perceptual sampling of auditory scenes

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