Task-modulated activation and functional connectivity of the temporal and frontal areas during speech comprehension

Yue, Qiuhai; Zhang, L.; Xu, Guo; Shu, Hua; Li, Ping

doi:10.1016/j.neuroscience.2012.12.067

Cited by 31 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…The main effect of task (i.e., active vs. passive listening) provided evidence for stronger synchrony between TPJ and vPMC in both hemispheres during active compared to passive perception task, which is likely reflecting enhanced sensorimotor integration (i.e., mapping between auditory and articulatory-motor representations) when people are actively engaged in a speech decision task with subsequent oral responses. This finding is concordant with a recent study showing bilateral sensorimotor transformations during perception in an overt speech repetition task (Cogan et al, 2014) and another showing that while passive listening to speech involved only temporal areas, active speech comprehension was recruiting also bilateral inferior frontal areas (Yue et al, 2013). The left-hemisphere connection showed directionality from vPMC to TPJ, possibly reflecting the integration of motor knowledge with speech inputs through top-down predictions (or attentional modulation, as previously discussed).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Enhanced neural synchrony between left auditory and premotor cortex is associated with successful phonetic categorization

et al. 2014

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The cortical dorsal auditory stream has been proposed to mediate mapping between auditory and articulatory-motor representations in speech processing. Whether this sensorimotor integration contributes to speech perception remains an open question. Here, magnetoencephalography was used to examine connectivity between auditory and motor areas while subjects were performing a sensorimotor task involving speech sound identification and overt repetition. Functional connectivity was estimated with inter-areal phase synchrony of electromagnetic oscillations. Structural equation modeling was applied to determine the direction of information flow. Compared to passive listening, engagement in the sensorimotor task enhanced connectivity within 200 ms after sound onset bilaterally between the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and ventral premotor cortex (vPMC), with the left-hemisphere connection showing directionality from vPMC to TPJ. Passive listening to noisy speech elicited stronger connectivity than clear speech between left auditory cortex (AC) and vPMC at ~100 ms, and between left TPJ and dorsal premotor cortex (dPMC) at ~200 ms. Information flow was estimated from AC to vPMC and from dPMC to TPJ. Connectivity strength among the left AC, vPMC, and TPJ correlated positively with the identification of speech sounds within 150 ms after sound onset, with information flowing from AC to TPJ, from AC to vPMC, and from vPMC to TPJ. Taken together, these findings suggest that sensorimotor integration mediates the categorization of incoming speech sounds through reciprocal auditory-to-motor and motor-to-auditory projections.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Enhanced neural synchrony between left auditory and premotor cortex is associated with successful phonetic categorization

et al. 2014

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“…The right temporal lobe activation has been widely observed during the phonological processing for Chinese subjects (29,30), whereas the right anterior temporal pole was anatomically related to speakers of Chinese (23). The activation of the rSTP in Chinese data of our research was consistent with these previous findings.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Cross-language differences in the brain network subserving intelligible speech

Peng

Lyu

et al. 2015

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

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How is language processed in the brain by native speakers of different languages? Is there one brain system for all languages or are different languages subserved by different brain systems? The first view emphasizes commonality, whereas the second emphasizes specificity. We investigated the cortical dynamics involved in processing two very diverse languages: a tonal language (Chinese) and a nontonal language (English). We used functional MRI and dynamic causal modeling analysis to compute and compare brain network models exhaustively with all possible connections among nodes of language regions in temporal and frontal cortex and found that the information flow from the posterior to anterior portions of the temporal cortex was commonly shared by Chinese and English speakers during speech comprehension, whereas the inferior frontal gyrus received neural signals from the left posterior portion of the temporal cortex in English speakers and from the bilateral anterior portion of the temporal cortex in Chinese speakers. Our results revealed that, although speech processing is largely carried out in the common left hemisphere classical language areas (Broca's and Wernicke's areas) and anterior temporal cortex, speech comprehension across different language groups depends on how these brain regions interact with each other. Moreover, the right anterior temporal cortex, which is crucial for tone processing, is equally important as its left homolog, the left anterior temporal cortex, in modulating the cortical dynamics in tone language comprehension. The current study pinpoints the importance of the bilateral anterior temporal cortex in language comprehension that is downplayed or even ignored by popular contemporary models of speech comprehension.speech perception | tonal language | functional MRI | cortical dynamics T he brain of a newborn discriminates the various phonemic contrasts used in different languages (1) by recruiting distributed cortical regions (2); by 6-10 mo, it is preferentially tuned to the phonemes in native speech that they have been exposed to (3, 4). In adult humans, the key neural nodes that subserve speech comprehension are located in the superior temporal cortex (5, 6) and the inferior frontal cortex (7). Do these regions interact in different ways depending on the type of language that is being processed? Little is known about how information flows among these critical language nodes in native speakers of different languages.As one of the unique capacities of the human brain (8), the nature of compositional languages and their neural mechanisms have been the interests of scientific research for decades. There are more than 7,000 different spoken languages in the world today used for communication. By exploring the brain networks subserving universal properties across languages and specific differences within different languages, such research helps address the essential questions in neurolinguistics such as the constitution of knowledge of language, as well as how it is acquired (9). Although ...

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“…As shown here, they also all show sensitivity to finer-grain syntactic manipulations. In addition, language regions exhibit synchronized low-frequency oscillations during rest (e.g., Cordes et al , 2000; Hampson, Peterson, Skudlarski, Gatenby, & Gore, 2002; Turken and Dronkers, 2011; Newman, Kenny, Saint-Aubin, & Klein, 2013; Yue, Zhang, Xu, Shu, & Li, 2013; Blank, Kanwisher & Fedorenko, 2014) and language comprehension (Blank et al, 2014). Finally, various functional properties of the language regions – such as, how large or lateralized they are – are strongly correlated across regions (Mahowald & Fedorenko, in revision).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Syntactic processing is distributed across the language system

et al. 2016

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Language comprehension recruits an extended set of regions in the human brain. Is syntactic processing localized to a particular region or regions within this system, or is it distributed across the entire ensemble of brain regions that support high-level linguistic processing? Evidence from aphasic patients is more consistent with the latter possibility: damage to many different language regions and to white-matter tracts connecting them has been shown to lead to similar syntactic comprehension deficits. However, brain imaging investigations of syntactic processing continue to focus on particular regions within the language system, often parts of Broca’s area and regions in the posterior temporal cortex. We hypothesized that, whereas the entire language system is in fact sensitive to syntactic complexity, the effects in some regions may be difficult to detect because of the overall lower response to language stimuli. Using an individual-subjects approach to localizing the language system, shown in prior work to be more sensitive than traditional group analyses, we indeed find responses to syntactic complexity throughout this system, consistent with the findings from the neuropsychological patient literature. We speculate that such distributed nature of syntactic processing could perhaps imply that syntax is inseparable from other aspects of language comprehension (e.g., lexico-semantic processing), in line with current linguistic and psycholinguistic theories and evidence. Neuroimaging investigations of syntactic processing thus need to expand their scope to include the entire system of high-level language processing regions in order to fully understand how syntax is instantiated in the human brain.

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Task-modulated activation and functional connectivity of the temporal and frontal areas during speech comprehension

Cited by 31 publications

References 61 publications

Enhanced neural synchrony between left auditory and premotor cortex is associated with successful phonetic categorization

Enhanced neural synchrony between left auditory and premotor cortex is associated with successful phonetic categorization

Cross-language differences in the brain network subserving intelligible speech

Syntactic processing is distributed across the language system

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