Cortical oscillations and entrainment in speech processing during working memory load.

ABSTRACT: Neuronal oscillations are thought to play an important role in working memory (WM) and speech processing. Listening to speech in real-life situations is often cognitively demanding but it is unknown whether WM load influences how auditory cortical activity synchronizes to speech features. Here, we developed an auditory n-back paradigm to investigate cortical entrainment to speech envelope fluctuations under different degrees of WM load. We measured the electroencephalogram, pupil dilations and behavioural performance from 22 subjects listening to continuous speech with an embedded n-back task. The speech stimuli consisted of long spoken number sequences created to match natural speech in terms of sentence intonation, syllabic rate and phonetic content. To burden different WM functions duri

SUBMITTER: Hjortkjaer J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7155003 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature