197 research outputs found

    Improving our understanding of speech and language outcome in neurosurgery patients

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    Malignant gliomas remain incurable and result in more years of life lost than any other tumours. Surgical resection is strongly recommended but carries a risk of causing functional impairment. This thesis aims to demonstrate how state-of-the-art functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) language paradigms can contribute to neurosurgical planning. The first three experiments use a multitask fMRI language paradigm to functionally segregate left posterior temporal and left posterior frontal regions involved in the perception and production of speech. Experiment 1 demonstrated three functionally distinct responses in the left posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS), left temporo-parietal junction and anterior ascending terminal branch of the left STS. Experiment 2 validates these findings in an independent group of participants, increasing confidence that they are robust. Experiment 3 dissociates the response of three different parts of the left premotor cortex during speech production. Experiment 4 shows that left posterior temporal regions are more consistently activated, in neurotypical controls, when a picture naming task presents pairs of objects rather than single objects. Further work could therefore test whether paired object naming is a more sensitive task for pre- and intra-operative language mapping. Finally, Experiment 5 found that successful reading before and after surgery, in two patients with gliomas affecting the left temporo-parietal junction, enhanced activation in bilateral perirhinal regions that were associated with semantic identification of visually presented objects in neurotypical controls. Future studies can now test whether patients who undergo resection of the left temporo-parietal junction have better reading, post-surgery, when bilateral perirhinal activation is enhanced prior to surgery. Taken together, this work expands our knowledge of the functional anatomy of language, proposes a new way of utilising fMRI data from neurotypical controls to tailor pre- and intra-operative language mapping strategies and provides an insight into how the reading system reorganises itself after brain damage

    Neural mechanisms of speech motor learning in persons who stutter

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    Fluent speech production requires rapid coordination among respiratory, laryngeal, and articulatory processes and is mediated by multiple neural systems (Bohland & Guenther, 2006). Stuttering is a fluency disorder characterized by core deficits in speech motor planning. Previous research indicates people who stutter (PWS) exhibit deficits in speech motor sequence learning and are slower and less accurate over practice relative to fluent speakers (Ludlow, Siren, & Zikira, 2004; Namasivayam & VanLieshout, 2004; Smits-Bandstra & De Nil, 2007; Smits-Bandstra, De Nil, & Saint-Cyr, 2006). Furthermore, the neural bases of impaired speech motor sequence learning in PWS are not well understood. We present a study in which PWS (n=18) and persons with fluent speech (PFS) (n=17) were taught phonotactically illegal (e.g. gbesb) and phonotactically legal (e.g. blerk) speech motor sequences over two practice sessions. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to investigate brain regions underlying the production of learned illegal syllables and novel illegal syllables. With practice, subjects produced syllables more accurately, which is indicative of motor sequence learning. Our findings suggest a speech motor performance deficit in PWS. Furthermore, these findings indicate speech motor sequence learning relies on a speech motor sequence learning network

    Dissociating the functions of three left posterior superior temporal regions that contribute to speech perception and production

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    Prior studies have shown that the left posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) and left temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) both contribute to phonological short-term memory, speech perception and speech production. Here, by conducting a within-subjects multi-factorial fMRI study, we dissociate the response profiles of these regions and a third region - the anterior ascending terminal branch of the left superior temporal sulcus (atSTS), which lies dorsal to pSTS and ventral to TPJ. First, we show that each region was more activated by (i) 1-back matching on visually presented verbal stimuli (words or pseudowords) compared to 1-back matching on visually presented non-verbal stimuli (pictures of objects or non-objects), and (ii) overt speech production than 1-back matching, across 8 types of stimuli (visually presented words, pseudowords, objects and non-objects and aurally presented words, pseudowords, object sounds and meaningless hums). The response properties of the three regions dissociated within the auditory modality. In left TPJ, activation was higher for auditory stimuli that were non-verbal (sounds of objects or meaningless hums) compared to verbal (words and pseudowords), irrespective of task (speech production or 1-back matching). In left pSTS, activation was higher for non-semantic stimuli (pseudowords and hums) than semantic stimuli (words and object sounds) on the dorsal pSTS surface (dpSTS), irrespective of task. In left atSTS, activation was not sensitive to either semantic or verbal content. The contrasting response properties of left TPJ, dpSTS and atSTS was cross-validated in an independent sample of 59 participants, using region-by-condition interactions. We also show that each region participates in non-overlapping networks of frontal, parietal and cerebellar regions. Our results challenge previous claims about functional specialisation in the left posterior superior temporal lobe and motivate future studies to determine the timing and directionality of information flow in the brain networks involved in speech perception and production

    Examining phonological processing in the healthy and damaged brain

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    In this thesis I explore the neural signature of different types of speech sound processing, in the healthy brain and after damage through stroke. The first two Experiments applied a newly developed fMRI language paradigm in healthy controls to study phonological retrieval from speech, orthography and semantics. This showed that there are at least two types of phonological processing that can be dissociated on a neuronal level. Bilateral superior temporal gyri were associated with processing auditory (phonological) representations of speech, consistent with the notion of input to phonology. In contrast, left putamen and precentral cortex/pars opercularis were associated with pre-articulatory activity, and thus with outputs from phonology. The validation of the results in a separate, larger sample increased confidence that these findings are robust rather than false positives. Experiment 3 was concerned with examining the role of a “key player” in phonological processing, which revealed that different parts of the supramarginal gyrus differ in their response profile during a set of language tasks. This is in accordance with cytoarchitectural and connectivity studies demonstrating the structural variability of the region, and has implications for prior imaging studies considering the supramarginal gyrus as a uniform entity in the phonological network. The final experiment revealed that the loss of supramarginal gyrus through stroke has inconsistent effects on language abilities, possibly due to other brain regions or white matter tracts that were damaged in some patients but not in others. It also showed that additional brain regions were recruited in patients compared to controls, which might reflect compensatory brain activation that supports recovery. Taken together, this work proposes a new way of interpreting phonological effects, in particular within the supramarginal gyrus, and new insights into how the brain supports phonological processing after stroke-induced damage

    Registration and statistical analysis of the tongue shape during speech production

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    This thesis analyzes the human tongue shape during speech production. First, a semi-supervised approach is derived for estimating the tongue shape from volumetric magnetic resonance imaging data of the human vocal tract. Results of this extraction are used to derive parametric tongue models. Next, a framework is presented for registering sparse motion capture data of the tongue by means of such a model. This method allows to generate full three-dimensional animations of the tongue. Finally, a multimodal and statistical text-to-speech system is developed that is able to synthesize audio and synchronized tongue motion from text.Diese Dissertation beschĂ€ftigt sich mit der Analyse der menschlichen Zungenform wĂ€hrend der Sprachproduktion. ZunĂ€chst wird ein semi-ĂŒberwachtes Verfahren vorgestellt, mit dessen Hilfe sich Zungenformen von volumetrischen Magnetresonanztomographie- Aufnahmen des menschlichen Vokaltrakts schĂ€tzen lassen. Die Ergebnisse dieses Extraktionsverfahrens werden genutzt, um ein parametrisches Zungenmodell zu konstruieren. Danach wird eine Methode hergeleitet, die ein solches Modell nutzt, um spĂ€rliche Bewegungsaufnahmen der Zunge zu registrieren. Dieser Ansatz erlaubt es, dreidimensionale Animationen der Zunge zu erstellen. Zuletzt wird ein multimodales und statistisches Text-to-Speech-System entwickelt, das in der Lage ist, Audio und die dazu synchrone Zungenbewegung zu synthetisieren.German Research Foundatio

    Phonetic Encoding, Verbal Working Memory and The Role of Broca's Area

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    Informatics Life-Sciences InstituteEven though Broca's area has been associated with speech and language processing since the 19th century, the exact role that it plays is still a matter of debate. Recent models on the neuroanatomical substrates of language have assigned Broca's area to different processes: syllabification (Indefrey and Levelt 2004), articulatory code storage (Hickok and Poeppel 2004) and verbal working memory (Chein and Fiez 2001; Chein et al. 2002). The subject of this doctoral dissertation, is to examine language production and disambiguate the role of Broca's area. This issue was addressed in a series of functional magnetic resonance imaging studies (fMRI) involving speech production, where the phonological properties of pseudowords were manipulated in a way that differentiated between syllabification and articulatory code generation. The load on verbal working memory was also changed. The behaviour of Broca's area was then examined in response to these manipulations to determine the dependence of the observed results on the different levels of processing and verbal working memory. The results from the present studies suggest that the dorsal premotor cortex has a consistent role in articulatory code generation irrespective of verbal working memory demands. In contrast, Broca's area, specifically Brodmann area 44, showed a main effect of phonetic encoding only during delayed response tasks. Interestingly, area BA44 was also found to be functionally segregated between the dorsal and ventral part. The dorsal part was sensitive to articulatory and phonological load, such as stimulus length. The ventral part on the other hand was sensitive to sub-lexical stimulus properties, but only during delayed response trials. These findings suggest that BA44 is not a homogeneous region, but it is divided into a dorsal premotor and a ventral prefrontal part. These results add another dimension of complexity to the study of Broca's area, its functional segregation and its role in language production

    Using non-invasive stimulation of the undamaged brain to guide the identification of lesion sites that predict language outcome after stroke

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    Disrupting the neural activity in the left anterior supramarginal gyrus (SMG) or opercular part of the left inferior frontal gyrus (pOp) with repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has been demonstrated to cause a transient slowing of response times during phonologically more than semantically demanding tasks. Likewise, a wealth of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have shown increased activation in SMG and/or pOp for phonological relative to semantic processing. Here I set out to investigate whether, and how frequently, stroke damage to SMG and/or pOp results in persistent phonological processing impairments in a large sample of 262 right-handed English-speaking adults, who were tested at least 1 year after a left-hemisphere stroke. In Experiment I, I compared the effect of damage to different parts of SMG and pOp that were defined by regions of interest from either TMS or fMRI studies of phonological processing in neurologically-normal individuals. I found that the incidence of phonological processing impairments was predicted significantly better by the presence or absence of damage to SMG and pOp regions defined by TMS studies than SMG and pOp regions defined by fMRI studies. Moreover, the discriminatory power (for segregating patients with and without phonological abilities) of the TMS sites was not improved further when combined with the fMRI sites. In Experiment II, I adapted the borders of the TMS SMG and pOp regions to include the surrounding grey and white matter where the presence or absence of stroke damage was consistently associated with the presence or absence of phonological processing impairments. The presence or absence of damage to these new TMS-guided regions was able to explain the incidence of phonological impairments better than the original TMS regions, even in a new sample of patients that was entirely independent of the region identification process. In Experiment III, I showed that damage to the TMS-guided regions accounted for the incidence of phonological impairments substantially better than damage to an alternative set of regions derived from voxel-based lesion-deficit mapping techniques that search the whole brain for areas that are most frequently damaged in those with phonological impairments. However, the best classification accuracy was observed when the analysis took into account a combination of regions from TMS-guided and voxel-based lesion-deficit mapping approaches. In Experiment IV, I investigated the nature of the functional impairment caused by SMG or pOp lesions and found that damage to either region impaired covert and overt phonological processing abilities more than semantic processing abilities, as predicted by prior TMS and fMRI studies of neurologically-normal subjects. Finally, the behavioural effects of damage were remarkably similar (i.e. no statistically significant differences) for both TMS-guided sites (i.e. pOp and SMG). In conclusion, the fact that damage to the TMS-guided SMG and pOp regions impaired phonological processing abilities years after stroke onset, suggests that these regions are critical for accurate phonological processing (both overt and covert) and that other brain areas are not typically able to fully compensate for the contribution that these regions make to language processing. More broadly, the results illustrate how non-invasive stimulation of the undamaged brain can be used to guide the identification of regions where brain damage is likely to cause persistent behavioural effects. By combining these regions of interest with those derived from other lesion-deficit mapping approaches, I was not only able to explain the presence, but also the absence, of phonological processing impairments in a large cohort of patients

    The neural mechanisms of visual short-term memory capacity

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