Neural Dynamics of the Processing of Speech Features: Evidence for a Progression of Features from Acoustic to Sentential Processing.

ABSTRACT: When we listen to speech, our brain's neurophysiological responses "track" its acoustic features, but it is less well understood how these auditory responses are modulated by linguistic content. Here, we recorded magnetoencephalography (MEG) responses while subjects listened to four types of continuous-speech-like passages: speech-envelope modulated noise, English-like non-words, scrambled words, and narrative passage. Temporal response function (TRF) analysis provides strong neural evidence for the emergent features of speech processing in cortex, from acoustics to higher-level linguistics, as incremental steps in neural speech processing. Critically, we show a stepwise hierarchical progression of progressively higher order features over time, reflected in both bottom-up (early) and top-d

SUBMITTER: Karunathilake IMD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10862830 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature