The effects of selective attention and speech acoustics on neural speech-tracking in a multi-talker scene. (July 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Rimmele, Johanna M.; Zion Golumbic, Elana; Schröger, Erich; Poeppel, David
• Is Part Of: Cortex. Volume 68(2015)
• Page Start: 144
• Page End: 154
• Publication Date: 2015-07
• Subjects: Auditory cortex -- Fine structure -- Linguistic -- Predictions -- Speech envelope; ECoG electrocorticography -- EEG electroencephalography -- ERF event-related field -- FAR false alarm rate -- fMRI functional magnetic resonance imaging -- HR hit rate -- ICA independent component analysis -- ITPC intertrial phase coherence -- ITPowC intertrial power coherence -- MEG magnetoencephalography -- RMS root mean square; Neuropsychology -- Periodicals; Nervous system -- Periodicals; Neurology -- Periodicals; Psychophysiology -- Periodicals; Behavior -- Periodicals; Neurology -- Periodicals; 612.825
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cortex.2014.12.014
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0010-9452

Abstract

Abstract: Attending to one speaker in multi-speaker situations is challenging. One neural mechanism proposed to underlie the ability to attend to a particular speaker is phase-locking of low-frequency activity in auditory cortex to speech's temporal envelope ("speech-tracking"), which is more precise for attended speech. However, it is not known what brings about this attentional effect, and specifically if it reflects enhanced processing of the fine structure of attended speech. To investigate this question we compared attentional effects on speech-tracking of natural versus vocoded speech which preserves the temporal envelope but removes the fine structure of speech. Pairs of natural and vocoded speech stimuli were presented concurrently and participants attended to one stimulus and performed a detection task while ignoring the other stimulus. We recorded magnetoencephalography (MEG) and compared attentional effects on the speech-tracking response in auditory cortex. Speech-tracking of natural, but not vocoded, speech was enhanced by attention, whereas neural tracking of ignored speech was similar for natural and vocoded speech. These findings suggest that the more precise speech-tracking of attended natural speech is related to processing its fine structure, possibly reflecting the application of higher-order linguistic processes. In contrast, when speech is unattended its fine structure is not processed to the same degree and thus elicits less precise speech-tracking more similar to vocoded speech.