Cargando…

Cortical tracking of voice pitch in the presence of multiple speakers depends on selective attention

Voice pitch carries linguistic and non-linguistic information. Previous studies have described cortical tracking of voice pitch in clean speech, with responses reflecting both pitch strength and pitch value. However, pitch is also a powerful cue for auditory stream segregation, especially when compe...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Brodbeck, Christian, Simon, Jonathan Z.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9393379/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36003957
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2022.828546
_version_ 1784771261760536576
author Brodbeck, Christian
Simon, Jonathan Z.
author_facet Brodbeck, Christian
Simon, Jonathan Z.
author_sort Brodbeck, Christian
collection PubMed
description Voice pitch carries linguistic and non-linguistic information. Previous studies have described cortical tracking of voice pitch in clean speech, with responses reflecting both pitch strength and pitch value. However, pitch is also a powerful cue for auditory stream segregation, especially when competing streams have pitch differing in fundamental frequency, as is the case when multiple speakers talk simultaneously. We therefore investigated how cortical speech pitch tracking is affected in the presence of a second, task-irrelevant speaker. We analyzed human magnetoencephalography (MEG) responses to continuous narrative speech, presented either as a single talker in a quiet background or as a two-talker mixture of a male and a female speaker. In clean speech, voice pitch was associated with a right-dominant response, peaking at a latency of around 100 ms, consistent with previous electroencephalography and electrocorticography results. The response tracked both the presence of pitch and the relative value of the speaker’s fundamental frequency. In the two-talker mixture, the pitch of the attended speaker was tracked bilaterally, regardless of whether or not there was simultaneously present pitch in the speech of the irrelevant speaker. Pitch tracking for the irrelevant speaker was reduced: only the right hemisphere still significantly tracked pitch of the unattended speaker, and only during intervals in which no pitch was present in the attended talker’s speech. Taken together, these results suggest that pitch-based segregation of multiple speakers, at least as measured by macroscopic cortical tracking, is not entirely automatic but strongly dependent on selective attention.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-9393379
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2022
publisher Frontiers Media S.A.
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-93933792022-08-23 Cortical tracking of voice pitch in the presence of multiple speakers depends on selective attention Brodbeck, Christian Simon, Jonathan Z. Front Neurosci Neuroscience Voice pitch carries linguistic and non-linguistic information. Previous studies have described cortical tracking of voice pitch in clean speech, with responses reflecting both pitch strength and pitch value. However, pitch is also a powerful cue for auditory stream segregation, especially when competing streams have pitch differing in fundamental frequency, as is the case when multiple speakers talk simultaneously. We therefore investigated how cortical speech pitch tracking is affected in the presence of a second, task-irrelevant speaker. We analyzed human magnetoencephalography (MEG) responses to continuous narrative speech, presented either as a single talker in a quiet background or as a two-talker mixture of a male and a female speaker. In clean speech, voice pitch was associated with a right-dominant response, peaking at a latency of around 100 ms, consistent with previous electroencephalography and electrocorticography results. The response tracked both the presence of pitch and the relative value of the speaker’s fundamental frequency. In the two-talker mixture, the pitch of the attended speaker was tracked bilaterally, regardless of whether or not there was simultaneously present pitch in the speech of the irrelevant speaker. Pitch tracking for the irrelevant speaker was reduced: only the right hemisphere still significantly tracked pitch of the unattended speaker, and only during intervals in which no pitch was present in the attended talker’s speech. Taken together, these results suggest that pitch-based segregation of multiple speakers, at least as measured by macroscopic cortical tracking, is not entirely automatic but strongly dependent on selective attention. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-08-08 /pmc/articles/PMC9393379/ /pubmed/36003957 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2022.828546 Text en Copyright © 2022 Brodbeck and Simon. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Brodbeck, Christian
Simon, Jonathan Z.
Cortical tracking of voice pitch in the presence of multiple speakers depends on selective attention
title Cortical tracking of voice pitch in the presence of multiple speakers depends on selective attention
title_full Cortical tracking of voice pitch in the presence of multiple speakers depends on selective attention
title_fullStr Cortical tracking of voice pitch in the presence of multiple speakers depends on selective attention
title_full_unstemmed Cortical tracking of voice pitch in the presence of multiple speakers depends on selective attention
title_short Cortical tracking of voice pitch in the presence of multiple speakers depends on selective attention
title_sort cortical tracking of voice pitch in the presence of multiple speakers depends on selective attention
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9393379/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36003957
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2022.828546
work_keys_str_mv AT brodbeckchristian corticaltrackingofvoicepitchinthepresenceofmultiplespeakersdependsonselectiveattention
AT simonjonathanz corticaltrackingofvoicepitchinthepresenceofmultiplespeakersdependsonselectiveattention