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 enhanced by linguistic content. Here, we recorded magnetoencephalography responses while subjects of both sexes listened to four types of continuous speechlike passages: speech envelope-modulated noise, English-like nonwords, scrambled words, and a narrative passage. Temporal response function (TRF) analysis provides strong neural evidence for the emergent features of speech processing in the 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

SUBMITTER: Karunathilake IMD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11905352 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature