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In this study we used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to investigate neural responses in normal-hearing adults as a function of speech recognition accuracy, intelligibility of the speech stimulus, and the manner in which speech is distorted. Participants listened to sentences and reported aloud what they heard. Speech quality was distorted artificially by vocoding (simulated cochlear implant speech) or naturally by adding background noise. Each type of distortion included high and low-intelligibility conditions. Sentences in quiet were used as baseline comparison. fNIRS data were analyzed using a newly developed image reconstruction approach. First, elevated cortical responses in the middle temporal gyrus (MTG) and middle frontal gyrus (MFG) were associated with speech recognition during the low-intelligibility conditions. Second, activation in the MTG was associated with recognition of vocoded speech with low intelligibility, whereas MFG activity was largely driven by recognition of speech in background noise, suggesting that the cortical response varies as a function of distortion type. Lastly, an accuracy effect in the MFG demonstrated significantly higher activation during correct perception relative to incorrect perception of speech. These results suggest that normal-hearing adults (i.e., untrained listeners of vocoded stimuli) do not exploit the same attentional mechanisms of the frontal cortex used to resolve naturally degraded speech and may instead rely on segmental and phonetic analyses in the temporal lobe to discriminate vocoded speech.

. Significance Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is unique among neuroimaging techniques in its ability to estimate changes in both oxyhemoglobin (HbO) and deoxyhemoglobin (HbR). However, fNIRS research has applied various data reporting practices based on these chromophores as measures of neural activation. Aim To quantify the variability of fNIRS chromophore data reporting practices and to explore recent data reporting trends in the literature. Approach We reviewed 660 fNIRS papers from 2015, 2018, and 2021 to extract information on fNIRS chromophore data reporting practices. Results Our review revealed five general practices for reporting fNIRS chromophores: (1) HbO only, (2) HbR only, (3) HbO and HbR, (4) correlation-based signal improvement, and (5) either the total (HbT) or difference (HbDiff) in concentration between chromophores. The field was primarily divided between reporting HbO only and reporting HbO and HbR. However, reporting one chromophore (HbO) was consistently observed as the most popular data reporting practice for each year reviewed. Conclusions Our results highlight the high heterogeneity of chromophore data reporting in fNIRS research. We discuss its potential implications for study comparison efforts and interpretation of results. Most importantly, our review demonstrates the need for a standard chromophore reporting practice to improve scientific transparency and, ultimately, to better understand how neural events relate to cognitive phenomena.