Vowel and formant representation in the human auditory speech cortex.

ABSTRACT: Vowels, a fundamental component of human speech across all languages, are cued acoustically by formants, resonance frequencies of the vocal tract shape during speaking. An outstanding question in neurolinguistics is how formants are processed neurally during speech perception. To address this, we collected high-density intracranial recordings from the human speech cortex on the superior temporal gyrus (STG) while participants listened to continuous speech. We found that two-dimensional receptive fields based on the first two formants provided the best characterization of vowel sound representation. Neural activity at single sites was highly selective for zones in this formant space. Furthermore, formant tuning is adjusted dynamically for speaker-specific spectral context. However, the enti

SUBMITTER: Oganian Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10330593 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature