Facilitation of motor excitability during listening to spoken sentences is not modulated by noise or semantic coherence

Comprehending speech can be particularly challenging in a noisy environment and in the absence of semantic context. It has been proposed that the articulatory motor system would be recruited especially in difficult listening conditions. However, it remains unknown how signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and semantic context affect the recruitment of the articulatory motor system when listening to continuous speech. The aim of the present study was to address the hypothesis that involvement of the articulatory motor cortex increases when the intelligibility and clarity of the spoken sentences decreases, because of noise and the lack of semantic context. We applied Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) to the lip and hand representations in the primary motor cortex and measured motor evoked potentials from the lip and hand muscles, respectively, to evaluate motor excitability when young adults listened to sentences. In Experiment 1, we found that the excitability of the lip motor cortex was facilitated during listening to both semantically anomalous and coherent sentences in noise relative to non-speech baselines, but neither SNR nor semantic context modulated the facilitation. In Experiment 2, we replicated these findings and found no difference in the excitability of the lip motor cortex between sentences in noise and clear sentences without noise. Thus, our results show that the articulatory motor cortex is involved in speech processing even in optimal and ecologically valid listening conditions and that its involvement is not modulated by the intelligibility and clarity of speech

Complémentarité entre le bilan neurovisuel orthoptique et l’oculométrie chez des enfants avec des difficultés de lecture

International audienceThe present study explores how eye-tracking contributes to the assessment of reading abilities, binocular dysconjugation, gaze direction and visual inhibition in children with reading difficulties. Results supports that such method is essential in clinical practice to complement the clinical orthoptic examination.Cette recherche vise à étudier l’apport de l’oculométrie en soutien du bilan orthoptique neurovisuel pour des enfants rencontrant des difficultés de lecture. Les performances de fluence en lecture, d’orientation du regard, d’inhibition visuelle et de conjugaison binoculaire ont été évaluées avec les deux méthodes et comparées entre elles. Les résultats soutiennent que l’oculométrie apparaît comme essentielle en pratique courante pour affiner l’évaluation des fonctions oculomotrices

Author Correction: Sensorimotor adaptation as a behavioural biomarker of early spinocerebellar ataxia type 6

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