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Cortical Dynamics of Acoustic and Phonological Processing in Speech Perception

In speech perception, a functional hierarchy has been proposed by recent functional neuroimaging studies: Core auditory areas on the dorsal plane of superior temporal gyrus (STG) are sensitive to basic acoustic characteristics, whereas downstream regions, specifically the left superior temporal sulc...

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Autores principales: Zhang, Linjun, Xi, Jie, Xu, Guoqing, Shu, Hua, Wang, Xiaoyi, Li, Ping
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2011
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3113809/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21695133
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0020963
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author Zhang, Linjun
Xi, Jie
Xu, Guoqing
Shu, Hua
Wang, Xiaoyi
Li, Ping
author_facet Zhang, Linjun
Xi, Jie
Xu, Guoqing
Shu, Hua
Wang, Xiaoyi
Li, Ping
author_sort Zhang, Linjun
collection PubMed
description In speech perception, a functional hierarchy has been proposed by recent functional neuroimaging studies: Core auditory areas on the dorsal plane of superior temporal gyrus (STG) are sensitive to basic acoustic characteristics, whereas downstream regions, specifically the left superior temporal sulcus (STS) and middle temporal gyrus (MTG) ventral to Heschl's gyrus (HG) are responsive to abstract phonological features. What is unclear so far is the relationship between the dorsal and ventral processes, especially with regard to whether low-level acoustic processing is modulated by high-level phonological processing. To address the issue, we assessed sensitivity of core auditory and downstream regions to acoustic and phonological variations by using within- and across-category lexical tonal continua with equal physical intervals. We found that relative to within-category variation, across-category variation elicited stronger activation in the left middle MTG (mMTG), apparently reflecting the abstract phonological representations. At the same time, activation in the core auditory region decreased, resulting from the top-down influences of phonological processing. These results support a hierarchical organization of the ventral acoustic-phonological processing stream, which originates in the right HG/STG and projects to the left mMTG. Furthermore, our study provides direct evidence that low-level acoustic analysis is modulated by high-level phonological representations, revealing the cortical dynamics of acoustic and phonological processing in speech perception. Our findings confirm the existence of reciprocal progression projections in the auditory pathways and the roles of both feed-forward and feedback mechanisms in speech perception.
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spelling pubmed-31138092011-06-21 Cortical Dynamics of Acoustic and Phonological Processing in Speech Perception Zhang, Linjun Xi, Jie Xu, Guoqing Shu, Hua Wang, Xiaoyi Li, Ping PLoS One Research Article In speech perception, a functional hierarchy has been proposed by recent functional neuroimaging studies: Core auditory areas on the dorsal plane of superior temporal gyrus (STG) are sensitive to basic acoustic characteristics, whereas downstream regions, specifically the left superior temporal sulcus (STS) and middle temporal gyrus (MTG) ventral to Heschl's gyrus (HG) are responsive to abstract phonological features. What is unclear so far is the relationship between the dorsal and ventral processes, especially with regard to whether low-level acoustic processing is modulated by high-level phonological processing. To address the issue, we assessed sensitivity of core auditory and downstream regions to acoustic and phonological variations by using within- and across-category lexical tonal continua with equal physical intervals. We found that relative to within-category variation, across-category variation elicited stronger activation in the left middle MTG (mMTG), apparently reflecting the abstract phonological representations. At the same time, activation in the core auditory region decreased, resulting from the top-down influences of phonological processing. These results support a hierarchical organization of the ventral acoustic-phonological processing stream, which originates in the right HG/STG and projects to the left mMTG. Furthermore, our study provides direct evidence that low-level acoustic analysis is modulated by high-level phonological representations, revealing the cortical dynamics of acoustic and phonological processing in speech perception. Our findings confirm the existence of reciprocal progression projections in the auditory pathways and the roles of both feed-forward and feedback mechanisms in speech perception. Public Library of Science 2011-06-13 /pmc/articles/PMC3113809/ /pubmed/21695133 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0020963 Text en Zhang et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Zhang, Linjun
Xi, Jie
Xu, Guoqing
Shu, Hua
Wang, Xiaoyi
Li, Ping
Cortical Dynamics of Acoustic and Phonological Processing in Speech Perception
title Cortical Dynamics of Acoustic and Phonological Processing in Speech Perception
title_full Cortical Dynamics of Acoustic and Phonological Processing in Speech Perception
title_fullStr Cortical Dynamics of Acoustic and Phonological Processing in Speech Perception
title_full_unstemmed Cortical Dynamics of Acoustic and Phonological Processing in Speech Perception
title_short Cortical Dynamics of Acoustic and Phonological Processing in Speech Perception
title_sort cortical dynamics of acoustic and phonological processing in speech perception
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3113809/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21695133
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0020963
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