Perceptual warping exposes categorical representations for speech in human brainstem responses.

ABSTRACT: The brain transforms continuous acoustic events into discrete category representations to downsample the speech signal for our perceptual-cognitive systems. Such phonetic categories are highly malleable, and their percepts can change depending on surrounding stimulus context. Previous work suggests these acoustic-phonetic mapping and perceptual warping of speech emerge in the brain no earlier than auditory cortex. Here, we examined whether these auditory-category phenomena inherent to speech perception occur even earlier in the human brain, at the level of auditory brainstem. We recorded speech-evoked frequency following responses (FFRs) during a task designed to induce more/less warping of listeners' perceptual categories depending on stimulus presentation order of a speech continuum (ran

SUBMITTER: Carter JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9992300 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature