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Individual speech tracking is predicted by intrinsic profiles of auditory and motor areas
Poster Session E, Friday, October 2, 11:00 am - 1:00 pm, Wangari Maathai
Johanna Rimmele1,2, Christina Lubinus1,2, Anne Keitel3, Jonas Obleser4,5, David Poeppel6; 1Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 2Cooperative Brain Imaging Center, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 3University of Dundee, UK, 4University of Lübeck, Germany, 5Center for Brain, Behavior, and Metabolism, Lübeck, Germany, 6New York University
Slow, endogenous auditory cortex brain rhythms are hypothesized to track acoustic amplitude modulations during speech comprehension. The tracking may be modulated by temporal predictions from the motor system. However, direct evidence for the involvement of endogenous auditory and motor brain rhythms is lacking. We analyse magnetoencephalographic recordings (n=57) during a speech intelligibility task and during resting state, as well as the behavioral speech comprehension performance and behavioral auditory-motor parameters that were accessed in various tasks (i.e. meassuring the spontaneous speech perception-production synchronization, the spontaneous motor production rate, the preferred listening rate), as well as the working memory performance. We find that endogenous peak frequencies (using a spectral profile clustering approach) of individuals’ resting-state theta rhythm in superior temporal gyrus predict speech tracking in this area (Gaussian Copula Mutual Information) during comprehension. Importantly, only for individuals with high auditory–motor synchronization profiles (indicated by the spontaneous speech perception-production synchronization behaviour), endogenous rates of speech motor areas (supplementary motor area, inferior frontal gyrus) predicted auditory-cortical speech tracking in superior temporal gyrus and Heschl's gyrus. These findings align with participants’ behavioural data in a speech intelligibility task, with effects of the spontaneous motor production rate only in high auditory-motor synchronizers. In contrast, in individuals with low auditory–motor synchronization profiles, working memory capacity was predictive of speech comprehension performance. The findings highlight different speech processing route preferences across individuals, with an auditory–motor route related to enhanced comprehension performance.
Topic Areas: Speech Perception, Speech Motor Control