From speech and talkers to the social world: The neural processing of human spoken language

Scott, Sophie K.

doi:10.1126/science.aax0288

Cited by 59 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 75 publications

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“…Target words used in this study (9 adjectives and 9 numbers, each presented in different sentences). Note that adjectives were comparable with regard to their positive valence (G. G. Scott, et al, 2019).…”

Section: Supplementary Filesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Similarly, the encoding of the acoustic speech envelope is seen widespread in the brain, but correct word comprehension correlates only with focal activity in temporal and motor regions (A. Keitel, et al, 2018b;S. K. Scott, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, syllable identity can be decoded from temporal, occipital and frontal areas, but only focal activity in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG) mediates perceptual categorisation ( Bouton et al, 2018 ). Similarly, the encoding of the acoustic speech envelope is seen widespread in the brain, but correct word comprehension correlates only with focal activity in temporal and motor regions ( Scott, 2019 ; Keitel et al, 2018 ). In general, activity in lower sensory pathways seems to correlate more with the actual physical stimulus, while activity in specific higher-tier regions correlates with the subjective percept ( Crochet et al, 2019 ; Romo et al, 2012 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Shared and modality-specific brain regions that mediate auditory and visual word comprehension

Keitel

Groß

Kayser

2020

eLife

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Visual speech carried by lip movements is an integral part of communication. Yet, it remains unclear in how far visual and acoustic speech comprehension are mediated by the same brain regions. Using multivariate classification of full-brain MEG data, we first probed where the brain represents acoustically and visually conveyed word identities. We then tested where these sensory-driven representations are predictive of participants' trial-wise comprehension. The comprehension-relevant representations of auditory and visual speech converged only in anterior angular and inferior frontal regions and were spatially dissociated from those representations that best reflected the sensory-driven word identity. These results provide a neural explanation for the behavioural dissociation of acoustic and visual speech comprehension and suggest that cerebral representations encoding word identities may be more modality-specific than often upheld.

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Section: Supplementary Filesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Shared and modality-specific brain regions that mediate auditory and visual word comprehension

Keitel

Groß

Kayser

2020

eLife

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“…Studies on speech have provided evidence in favor of this hypothesis 18,21–24 , e.g. by showing that delta band activity serves the chunking or segmentation of speech on a sentence-level time scale 15,18,25 while theta band activity reflects the processing of syllable-scale information. However, the underlying processes may possibly be specific to speech, which is intrinsically predictive on multiple time scales.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Delta/Theta band EEG activity shapes the rhythmic perceptual sampling of auditory scenes

Kubetschek

Kayser²

2020

Preprint

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Many studies speak in favor of a rhythmic mode of listening, by which the encoding of acoustic information is structured by rhythmic neural processes at the time scale of about 1 to 4 Hz. Indeed, psychophysical data suggest that humans sample acoustic information in extended soundscapes not uniformly, but weigh the evidence at different moments for their perceptual decision at the time scale of about 2 Hz. We here test the critical prediction that such rhythmic perceptual sampling is directly related to the state of ongoing brain activity prior to the stimulus. Human participants judged the direction of frequency sweeps in 1.2 s long soundscapes while their EEG was recorded. Computing the perceptual weights attributed to different epochs within these soundscapes contingent on the phase or power of pre-stimulus oscillatory EEG activity revealed a direct link between the 4Hz EEG phase and power prior to the stimulus and the phase of the rhythmic component of these perceptual weights. Hence, the temporal pattern by which the acoustic information is sampled over time for behavior is directly related to pre-stimulus brain activity in the delta/theta band. These results close a gap in the mechanistic picture linking ongoing delta band activity with their role in shaping the segmentation and perceptual influence of subsequent acoustic information.

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“…Both, voice identity and speech-in-noise recognition abilities are key requirements for successful social communication (reviewed in e.g., Mattys et al, 2012;Blank et al, 2014;Scott, 2019). Familiarity with a voice leads to a familiarity feeling towards other people (Blank et al, 2014;Maguinness et al, 2018) and familiar voices' speech is easier to recognise (Nygaard and Pisoni, 1998;Kreitewolf et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Altered processing of communication signals in the subcortical auditory sensory pathway in autism

Schelinski¹,

Tabas²,

Kriegstein³

2020

Preprint

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Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a clinical condition that is associated with deficient processing of communication signals. To-date, most neuroscience research on ASD focuses on explaining these symptoms at the cerebral cortex level or in limbic structures. This research implicitly or explicitly assumes that the subcortical sensory pathways are intact in ASD. To date, however, the integrity of subcortical sensory pathway nuclei in ASD has never been investigated in humans in vivo. Here, we assessed the functional integrity of auditory sensory pathway nuclei in ASD in three independent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments. We focused on two aspects of auditory communication that are impaired in ASD: voice identity perception, and recognising speech-in noise. Adults with ASD (n = 16 in experiments 1 and 2 and n = 17 in another sample in experiment 3) and typically developed control groups were pairwise matched on sex, age, handedness, and full-scale IQ. We found reduced processing in the ASD as compared to the control groups in the central midbrain structure of the auditory pathway (inferior colliculus, IC; all results FWE corrected and Bonferroni corrected for the number of regions tested). The right IC responded less in the ASD as compared to the control group for voice identity recognition, in contrast to a speech recognition task. The right IC also responded less in the ASD as compared to the control group when passively listening to vocal sounds in contrast to non-vocal sounds. For speech-in-noise recognition, we found that within the control group, the left and right IC responded more when performing a speech-in-noise recognition task as compared to when performing a speech recognition task without additional noise. In the ASD group, this was only the case in the left, but not the right IC. There was no interaction between noise and group. The results show that communication signal processing in ASD is associated with reduced subcortical sensory functioning in the midbrain. The results highlight the importance of considering sensory processing alterations in explaining social communication difficulties, which are at the core of ASD.

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From speech and talkers to the social world: The neural processing of human spoken language

Cited by 59 publications

References 75 publications

Shared and modality-specific brain regions that mediate auditory and visual word comprehension

Shared and modality-specific brain regions that mediate auditory and visual word comprehension

Delta/Theta band EEG activity shapes the rhythmic perceptual sampling of auditory scenes

Altered processing of communication signals in the subcortical auditory sensory pathway in autism

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