1,142 research outputs found
Learning and adaptation in speech production without a vocal tract
How is the complex audiomotor skill of speaking learned? To what extent does it depend on the specific characteristics of the vocal tract? Here, we developed a touchscreen-based speech synthesizer to examine learning of speech production independent of the vocal tract. Participants were trained to reproduce heard vowel targets by reaching to locations on the screen without visual feedback and receiving endpoint vowel sound auditory feedback that depended continuously on touch location. Participants demonstrated learning as evidenced by rapid increases in accuracy and consistency in the production of trained targets. This learning generalized to productions of novel vowel targets. Subsequent to learning, sensorimotor adaptation was observed in response to changes in the location-sound mapping. These findings suggest that participants learned adaptable sensorimotor maps allowing them to produce desired vowel sounds. These results have broad implications for understanding the acquisition of speech motor control.Published versio
Speech Production as State Feedback Control
Spoken language exists because of a remarkable neural process. Inside a speaker's brain, an intended message gives rise to neural signals activating the muscles of the vocal tract. The process is remarkable because these muscles are activated in just the right way that the vocal tract produces sounds a listener understands as the intended message. What is the best approach to understanding the neural substrate of this crucial motor control process? One of the key recent modeling developments in neuroscience has been the use of state feedback control (SFC) theory to explain the role of the CNS in motor control. SFC postulates that the CNS controls motor output by (1) estimating the current dynamic state of the thing (e.g., arm) being controlled, and (2) generating controls based on this estimated state. SFC has successfully predicted a great range of non-speech motor phenomena, but as yet has not received attention in the speech motor control community. Here, we review some of the key characteristics of speech motor control and what they say about the role of the CNS in the process. We then discuss prior efforts to model the role of CNS in speech motor control, and argue that these models have inherent limitations – limitations that are overcome by an SFC model of speech motor control which we describe. We conclude by discussing a plausible neural substrate of our model
Abnormal Speech Motor Control in Individuals with 16p11.2 Deletions.
Speech and motor deficits are highly prevalent (>70%) in individuals with the 600 kb BP4-BP5 16p11.2 deletion; however, the mechanisms that drive these deficits are unclear, limiting our ability to target interventions and advance treatment. This study examined fundamental aspects of speech motor control in participants with the 16p11.2 deletion. To assess capacity for control of voice, we examined how accurately and quickly subjects changed the pitch of their voice within a trial to correct for a transient perturbation of the pitch of their auditory feedback. When compared to controls, 16p11.2 deletion carriers show an over-exaggerated pitch compensation response to unpredictable mid-vocalization pitch perturbations. We also examined sensorimotor adaptation of speech by assessing how subjects learned to adapt their sustained productions of formants (speech spectral peak frequencies important for vowel identity), in response to consistent changes in their auditory feedback during vowel production. Deletion carriers show reduced sensorimotor adaptation to sustained vowel identity changes in auditory feedback. These results together suggest that 16p11.2 deletion carriers have fundamental impairments in the basic mechanisms of speech motor control and these impairments may partially explain the deficits in speech and language in these individuals
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Cross-modal extinction in a boy with severely autistic behaviour and high verbal intelligence
Anecdotal reports from individuals with autism suggest a loss of awareness to stimuli from one modality in the presence of stimuli from another. Here we document such a case in a detailed study of T.M., a 13-year-old boy with autism in whom significant autistic behaviors are combined with an uneven IQ profile of superior verbal and low performance abilities. Although T.M.'s speech is often unintelligible and his behavior is dominated by motor stereotypies and impulsivity, he can communicate by typing or pointing independently within a letter board. A series of experiments using simple and highly salient visual, auditory, and tactile stimuli demonstrated a hierarchy of cross-modal extinction, in which auditory information extinguished other modalities at various levels of processing. T.M. also showed deficits in shifting and sustaining attention. These results provide evidence for mono-channel perception in autism and suggest a general pattern of winner-takes-all processing in which a stronger stimulus-d riven representation dominates behavior, extinguishing weaker representations
New evidence for Dicke's superradiance in the 6.7 GHz methanol spectral line in the interstellar medium
We present new evidence for superradiance (SR) in the methanol 6.7 GHz spectral line for three different star-forming regions: S255IR-NIRS3, G24.329+0.144, and Cepheus A. Our analysis shows that some of the flux–density flares exhibiting fast rise times and asymmetric light curves reported in these sources can naturally be explained within the context of SR. When a threshold for the inverted population column density is exceeded in a maser-hosting region, the radiation mode switches from one regulated by stimulated emission (maser) to SR. Superradiance, as a more efficient energy release mechanism, manifests itself through strong bursts of radiation emanating from spatially compact regions. Elevated inverted population densities and the initiation of SR can be due to a change in radiative pumping. Here, we show that an increase in the pump rate and the inverted population density of only a factor of a few results in a significant increase in radiation. While the changes in the pump rate can take place over a few hundred days, the rise in radiation flux density when SR is initiated is drastic and happens over a much shorter time-scale
Sensorimotor adaptation of speech I: Compensation and adaptation
When motor actions (e.g., reaching with your hand) adapt to altered sensory feedback (e.g., viewing a shifted image of your hand through a prism), the phenomenon is called sensorimotor adaptation (SA). In the study reported here, SA was observed in speech. In two 2-hour experiments (adaptation and control), participants whispered a variety of CVC words. For those words containing the vowel /E/, participants heard auditory feedback of their whispering. A DSPbased vocoder processed the participants' auditory feedback in real time, allowing the formant frequencies of participants' auditory speech feedback to be shifted. In the adaptation experiment, formants were shifted along one edge of the vowel triangle. For half the participants, formants were shifted so participants heard /A/ when they produced /E/; for the other half, the shift made participants hear /i/ when they produced /E/. During the adaptation experiment, participants altered their production of /E/ to compensate for the altered feedback, and these production changes were retained when participants whispered with auditory feedback blocked by masking noise. In a control experiment, in which the formants were not shifted, participants' production changes were small and inconsistent. Participants exhibited a range of adaptations in response to the altered feedback, with some participants adapting almost completely, and other participants showing very little or no adaptation
Testing Galactic Magnetic Field Models using Near-Infrared Polarimetry
This work combines new observations of NIR starlight linear polarimetry with
previously simulated observations in order to constrain dynamo models of the
Galactic magnetic field. Polarimetric observations were obtained with the Mimir
instrument on the Perkins Telescope in Flagstaff, AZ, along a line of constant
Galactic longitude (\ell = 150\circ) with 17 pointings of the 10' \times 10'
field of view between -75\circ < b < 10\circ, with more frequent pointings
towards the Galactic midplane. A total of 10,962 stars were photometrically
measured and 1,116 had usable polarizations. The observed distribution of
polarization position angles with Galactic latitude and the cumulative
distribution function of the measured polarizations are compared to predicted
values. While the predictions lack the effects of turbulence and are therefore
idealized, this comparison allows significant rejection of A0-type magnetic
field models. S0 and disk-even halo-odd magnetic field geometries are also
rejected by the observations, but at lower significance. New predictions of
spiral-type, axisymmetric magnetic fields, when combined with these new NIR
observations, constrain the Galactic magnetic field spiral pitch angle to
-6\circ \pm 2\circ.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, Accepted for publication in Ap
The Magnetic Field in Taurus Probed by Infrared Polarization
We present maps of the plane-of-sky magnetic field within two regions of the
Taurus molecular cloud: one in the dense core L1495/B213 filament, the other in
a diffuse region to the west. The field is measured from the polarization of
background starlight seen through the cloud. In total, we measured 287
high-quality near-infrared polarization vectors in these regions. In
L1495/B213, the percent polarization increases with column density up to Av ~ 9
mag, the limits of our data. The Radiative Torques model for grain alignment
can explain this behavior, but models that invoke turbulence are inconsistent
with the data. We also combine our data with published optical and
near-infrared polarization measurements in Taurus. Using this large sample, we
estimate the strength of the plane-of-sky component of the magnetic field in
nine subregions. This estimation is done with two different techniques that use
the observed dispersion in polarization angles. Our values range from 5-82
microgauss and tend to be higher in denser regions. In all subregions, the
critical index of the mass-to-magnetic flux ratio is sub-unity, implying that
Taurus is magnetically supported on large scales (~2 pc). Within the region
observed, the B213 filament makes a sharp turn to the north and the direction
of the magnetic field also takes a sharp turn, switching from being
perpendicular to the filament to becoming parallel. This behavior can be
understood if we are observing the rim of a bubble. We argue that it has
resulted from a supernova remnant associated with a recently discovered nearby
gamma-ray pulsar.Comment: Accepted into the Astrophysical Journal. 20 pages in emulateapj
format including 10 figures and 4 table
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