Irregular speech rate dissociates auditory cortical entrainment, evoked responses, and frontal alpha

The entrainment of slow rhythmic auditory cortical activity to the temporal regularities in speech is considered to be a central mechanism underlying auditory perception. Previous work has shown that entrainment is reduced when the quality of the acoustic input is degraded, but has also linked rhythmic activity at similar time scales to the encoding of temporal expectations. To understand these bottom-up and top-down contributions to rhythmic entrainment, we manipulated the temporal predictive structure of speech by parametrically altering the distribution of pauses between syllables or words, thereby rendering the local speech rate irregular while preserving intelligibility and the envelope fluctuations of the acoustic signal. Recording EEG activity in human participants, we found that this manipulation did not alter neural processes reflecting the encoding of individual sound transients, such as evoked potentials. However, the manipulation significantly reduced the fidelity of auditory delta (but not theta) band entrainment to the speech envelope. It also reduced left frontal alpha power and this alpha reduction was predictive of the reduced delta entrainment across participants. Our results show that rhythmic auditory entrainment in delta and theta bands reflect functionally distinct processes. Furthermore, they reveal that delta entrainment is under top-down control and likely reflects prefrontal processes that are sensitive to acoustical regularities rather than the bottom-up encoding of acoustic features

A neural oscillations perspective on phonological development and phonological processing in developmental dyslexia

Children’s ability to reflect upon and manipulate the sounds in words (’phonological awareness’) develops as part of natural language acquisition, supports reading acquisition, and develops further as reading and spelling are learned. Children with developmental dyslexia typically have impairments in phonological awareness. Many developmental factors contribute to individual differences in phonological development. One important source of individual differences may be the child’s sensory/neural processing of the speech signal from an amplitude modulation (~ energy or intensity variation) perspective, which may affect the quality of the sensory/neural representations (’phonological representations’) that support phonological awareness. During speech encoding, brain electrical rhythms (oscillations, rhythmic variations in neural excitability) re-calibrate their temporal activity to be in time with rhythmic energy variations in the speech signal. The accuracy of this neural alignment or ’entrainment’ process is related to speech intelligibility. Recent neural studies demonstrate atypical oscillatory function at slower rates in children with developmental dyslexia. Potential relations with the development of phonological awareness by children with dyslexia are discussed.Medical Research Council, G0400574 and G090237

Decoding auditory attention and neural language processing in adverse conditions and different listener groups

This thesis investigated subjective, behavioural and neurophysiological (EEG) measures of speech processing in various adverse conditions and with different listener groups. In particular, this thesis focused on different neural processing stages and their relationship with auditory attention, effort, and measures of speech intelligibility. Study 1 set the groundwork by establishing a toolbox of various neural measures to investigate online speech processing, from the frequency following response (FFR) and cortical measures of speech processing, to the N400, a measure of lexico-semantic processing. Results showed that peripheral processing is heavily influenced by stimulus characteristics such as degradation, whereas central processing units are more closely linked to higher-order phenomena such as speech intelligibility. In Study 2, a similar experimental paradigm was used to investigate differences in neural processing between a hearing-impaired and a normal-hearing group. Subjects were presented with short stories in different levels of multi-talker babble noise, and with different settings on their hearing aids. Findings indicate that, particularly at lower noise levels, the hearing-impaired group showed much higher cortical entrainment than the normal- hearing group, despite similar levels of speech recognition. Intersubject correlation, another global neural measure of auditory attention, however, was similarly affected by noise levels in both the hearing-impaired and the normal-hearing group. This finding indicates extra processing in the hearing-impaired group only on the level of the auditory cortex. Study 3, in contrast to Studies 1 and 2 (which both investigated the effects of bottom-up factors on neural processing), examined the links between entrainment and top-down factors, specifically motivation; as well as reasons for the 5 higher entrainment found in hearing-impaired subjects in Study 2. Results indicated that, while behaviourally there was no difference between incentive and non-incentive conditions, neurophysiological measures of attention such as intersubject correlation were affected by the presence of an incentive to perform better. Moreover, using a specific degradation type resulted in subjects’ increased cortical entrainment under degraded conditions. These findings support the hypothesis that top-down factors such as motivation influence neurophysiological measures; and that higher entrainment to degraded speech might be triggered specifically by the reduced availability of spectral detail contained in speech

Representation of Instantaneous and Short-Term Loudness in the Human Cortex.

Acoustic signals pass through numerous transforms in the auditory system before perceptual attributes such as loudness and pitch are derived. However, relatively little is known as to exactly when these transformations happen, and where, cortically or sub-cortically, they occur. In an effort to examine this, we investigated the latencies and locations of cortical entrainment to two transforms predicted by a model of loudness perception for time-varying sounds: the transforms were instantaneous loudness and short-term loudness, where the latter is hypothesized to be derived from the former and therefore should occur later in time. Entrainment of cortical activity was estimated from electro- and magneto-encephalographic (EMEG) activity, recorded while healthy subjects listened to continuous speech. There was entrainment to instantaneous loudness bilaterally at 45, 100, and 165 ms, in Heschl's gyrus, dorsal lateral sulcus, and Heschl's gyrus, respectively. Entrainment to short-term loudness was found in both the dorsal lateral sulcus and superior temporal sulcus at 275 ms. These results suggest that short-term loudness is derived from instantaneous loudness, and that this derivation occurs after processing in sub-cortical structures.This work was supported by an ERC Advanced Grant (230570, ‘Neurolex’) to WMW, and by MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit (CBU) funding to WMW (U.1055.04.002.00001.01). Computing resources were provided by the MRC-CBU.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Frontiers via http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2016.0018

How visual cues to speech rate influence speech perception

Spoken words are highly variable and therefore listeners interpret speech sounds relative to the surrounding acoustic context, such as the speech rate of a preceding sentence. For instance, a vowel midway between short /ɑ/ and long /a:/ in Dutch is perceived as short /ɑ/ in the context of preceding slow speech, but as long /a:/ if preceded by a fast context. Despite the well-established influence of visual articulatory cues on speech comprehension, it remains unclear whether visual cues to speech rate also influence subsequent spoken word recognition. In two ‘Go Fish’-like experiments, participants were presented with audio-only (auditory speech + fixation cross), visual-only (mute videos of talking head), and audiovisual (speech + videos) context sentences, followed by ambiguous target words containing vowels midway between short /ɑ/ and long /a:/. In Experiment 1, target words were always presented auditorily, without visual articulatory cues. Although the audio-only and audiovisual contexts induced a rate effect (i.e., more long /a:/ responses after fast contexts), the visual-only condition did not. When, in Experiment 2, target words were presented audiovisually, rate effects were observed in all three conditions, including visual-only. This suggests that visual cues to speech rate in a context sentence influence the perception of following visual target cues (e.g., duration of lip aperture), which at an audiovisual integration stage bias participants’ target categorization responses. These findings contribute to a better understanding of how what we see influences what we hear

Educational neuroscience: Neural structure-mapping and the promise of oscillations

A critical goal for educational neuroscience is to specify causal developmental mechanisms of learning. In-depth understanding of neural information coding and transmission should enable understanding of how sensory systems build the cognitive systems critical for education–language, attention, memory-over developmental time. Cortical oscillatory encoding processes may offer mechanistic insights into how developmental trajectories unfold. All educators are familiar with children who show mastery of taught information one week, yet subsequently appear to lose it. Oscillatory research shows that sensory information that arrives out of phase with ongoing oscillations does not reach awareness, while complex combinations of bottom-up and top-down phase-phase and phase-power relations enable context and prior knowledge to influence current performance. Oscillatory studies of language are used to illustrate the promise of oscillations research for education.MRC (G0902375)This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2016.05.011

Neural synchronization is strongest to the spectral flux of slow music and depends on familiarity and beat salience

Neural activity in the auditory system synchronizes to sound rhythms, and brain–environment synchronization is thought to be fundamental to successful auditory perception. Sound rhythms are often operationalized in terms of the sound’s amplitude envelope. We hypothesized that – especially for music – the envelope might not best capture the complex spectro-temporal fluctuations that give rise to beat perception and synchronized neural activity. This study investigated (1) neural synchronization to different musical features, (2) tempo-dependence of neural synchronization, and (3) dependence of synchronization on familiarity, enjoyment, and ease of beat perception. In this electroencephalography study, 37 human participants listened to tempo-modulated music (1–4 Hz). Independent of whether the analysis approach was based on temporal response functions (TRFs) or reliable components analysis (RCA), the spectral flux of music – as opposed to the amplitude envelope – evoked strongest neural synchronization. Moreover, music with slower beat rates, high familiarity, and easy-to-perceive beats elicited the strongest neural response. Our results demonstrate the importance of spectro-temporal fluctuations in music for driving neural synchronization, and highlight its sensitivity to musical tempo, familiarity, and beat salience

The directional effect of target position on spatial selective auditory attention

Spatial selective auditory attention plays a crucial role in listening in a mixture of competing speech sounds. Previous neuroimaging studies have reported alpha band neural activity modulated by auditory attention, along with the alpha lateralization corresponding to attentional focus. A greater cortical representation of the attended speech envelope compared to the ignored speech envelope was also found, a phenomenon known as \u27neural speech tracking’. However, little is known about the neural activities when attentional focus is directed on speech sounds from behind the listener, even though understanding speech from behind is a common and essential aspect of daily life. The objectives of this study are to investigate the impact of four distinct target positions (left, right, front, and particularly, behind) on spatial selective auditory attention by concurrently assessing 1) spatial selective speech identification, 2) oscillatory alpha-band power, and 3) neural speech tracking. Fifteen young adults with normal hearing (NH) were enrolled in this study (M = 21.40, ages 18-29; 10 females). The selective speech identification task indicated that the target position presented at back was the most challenging condition, followed by the front condition, with the lateral condition being the least demanding. The normalized alpha power was modulated by target position and the power was significantly lateralized to either the left or right side, not the front and back. The parieto-occipital alpha power in front-back configuration was significantly lower than the results for left-right listening configuration and the normalized alpha power in the back condition was significantly higher than in the front condition. The speech tracking function of to-be-attended speech envelope was affected by the direction of ix target stream. The behavioral outcome (selective speech identification) was correlated with parieto-occipital alpha power and neural speech tracking correlation coefficient as neural correlates of auditory attention, but there was no significant correlation between alpha power and neural speech tracking. The results suggest that in addition to existing mechanism theories, it might be necessary to consider how our brain responds depending on the location of the sound in order to interpret the neural correlates and behavioral consequences in a meaningful way as well as a potential application of neural speech tracking in studies on spatial selective hearing

Sing to me, baby: Infants show neural tracking and rhythmic movements to live and dynamic maternal singing

Infant-directed singing has unique acoustic characteristics that may allow even very young infants to respond to the rhythms carried through the caregiver’s voice. The goal of this study was to examine neural and movement responses to live and dynamic maternal singing in 7-month-old infants and their relation to linguistic development. In total, 60 mother-infant dyads were observed during two singing conditions (playsong and lullaby). In Study 1 (n = 30), we measured infant EEG and used an encoding approach utilizing ridge regressions to measure neural tracking. In Study 2 (n =40), we coded infant rhythmic movements. In both studies, we assessed children’s vocabulary when they were 20 months old. In Study 1, we found above-threshold neural tracking of maternal singing, with superior tracking of lullabies than playsongs. We also found that the acoustic features of infant-directed singing modulated tracking. In Study 2, infants showed more rhythmic movement to playsongs than lullabies. Importantly, neural coordination (Study 1) and rhythmic movement (Study 2) to playsongs were positively related to infants’ expressive vocabulary at 20 months. These results highlight the importance of infants’ brain and movement coordination to their caregiver’s musical presentations, potentially as a function of musical variability