Dataset Information

Dissociating Cortical Activity during Processing of Native and Non-Native Audiovisual Speech from Early to Late Infancy.

ABSTRACT: Initially, infants are capable of discriminating phonetic contrasts across the world's languages. Starting between seven and ten months of age, they gradually lose this ability through a process of perceptual narrowing. Although traditionally investigated with isolated speech sounds, such narrowing occurs in a variety of perceptual domains (e.g., faces, visual speech). Thus far, tracking the developmental trajectory of this tuning process has been focused primarily on auditory speech alone, and generally using isolated sounds. But infants learn from speech produced by people talking to them, meaning they learn from a complex audiovisual signal. Here, we use near-infrared spectroscopy to measure blood concentration changes in the bilateral temporal cortices of infants in three different age groups: 3-to-6 months, 7-to-10 months, and 11-to-14-months. Critically, all three groups of infants were tested with continuous audiovisual speech in both their native and another, unfamiliar language. We found that at each age range, infants showed different patterns of cortical activity in response to the native and non-native stimuli. Infants in the youngest group showed bilateral cortical activity that was greater overall in response to non-native relative to native speech; the oldest group showed left lateralized activity in response to native relative to non-native speech. These results highlight perceptual tuning as a dynamic process that happens across modalities and at different levels of stimulus complexity.

SUBMITTER: Fava E

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4194034 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Dissociating Cortical Activity during Processing of Native and Non-Native Audiovisual Speech from Early to Late Infancy.

Fava Eswen E Hull Rachel R Bortfeld Heather H

Brain sciences 20140811 3

Initially, infants are capable of discriminating phonetic contrasts across the world's languages. Starting between seven and ten months of age, they gradually lose this ability through a process of perceptual narrowing. Although traditionally investigated with isolated speech sounds, such narrowing occurs in a variety of perceptual domains (e.g., faces, visual speech). Thus far, tracking the developmental trajectory of this tuning process has been focused primarily on auditory speech alone, and ...[more]

PMID: 25116572

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Project description:The cortical processing of auditory-alone, visual-alone, and audiovisual speech information is temporally and spatially distributed, and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) cannot adequately resolve its temporal dynamics. In order to investigate a hypothesized spatiotemporal organization for audiovisual speech processing circuits, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded using electroencephalography (EEG). Stimuli were congruent audiovisual/ba/, incongruent auditory/ba/synchronized with visual/ga/, auditory-only/ba/, and visual-only/ba/and/ga/. Current density reconstructions (CDRs) of the ERP data were computed across the latency interval of 50-250 ms. The CDRs demonstrated complex spatiotemporal activation patterns that differed across stimulus conditions. The hypothesized circuit that was investigated here comprised initial integration of audiovisual speech by the middle superior temporal sulcus (STS), followed by recruitment of the intraparietal sulcus (IPS), followed by activation of Broca's area [Miller, L.M., d'Esposito, M., 2005. Perceptual fusion and stimulus coincidence in the cross-modal integration of speech. Journal of Neuroscience 25, 5884-5893]. The importance of spatiotemporally sensitive measures in evaluating processing pathways was demonstrated. Results showed, strikingly, early (<100 ms) and simultaneous activations in areas of the supramarginal and angular gyrus (SMG/AG), the IPS, the inferior frontal gyrus, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Also, emergent left hemisphere SMG/AG activation, not predicted based on the unisensory stimulus conditions was observed at approximately 160 to 220 ms. The STS was neither the earliest nor most prominent activation site, although it is frequently considered the sine qua non of audiovisual speech integration. As discussed here, the relatively late activity of the SMG/AG solely under audiovisual conditions is a possible candidate audiovisual speech integration response.

Project description:BackgroundFunctional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) studies have demonstrated associations between hearing outcomes after cochlear implantation and plastic brain changes. However, inconsistent results make it difficult to draw conclusions. A major problem is that many variables need to be controlled. To gain further understanding, a careful preparation and planning of such a functional neuroimaging task is key.ObjectiveUsing fNIRS, our main objective is to develop a well-controlled audiovisual speech comprehension task to study brain activation in individuals with normal hearing and hearing impairment (including cochlear implant users). The task should be deductible from clinically established tests, induce maximal cortical activation, use optimal coverage of relevant brain regions, and be reproducible by other research groups.MethodsThe protocol will consist of a 5-minute resting state and 2 stimulation periods that are 12 minutes each. During the stimulation periods, 13-second video recordings of the clinically established Oldenburg Sentence Test (OLSA) will be presented. Stimuli will be presented in 4 different modalities: (1) speech in quiet, (2) speech in noise, (3) visual only (ie, lipreading), and (4) audiovisual speech. Each stimulus type will be repeated 10 times in a counterbalanced block design. Interactive question windows will monitor speech comprehension during the task. After the measurement, we will perform a 3D scan to digitize optode positions and verify the covered anatomical locations.ResultsThis paper reports the study protocol. Enrollment for the study started in August 2021. We expect to publish our first results by the end of 2022.ConclusionsThe proposed audiovisual speech comprehension task will help elucidate neural correlates to speech understanding. The comprehensive study will have the potential to provide additional information beyond the conventional clinical standards about the underlying plastic brain changes of a hearing-impaired person. It will facilitate more precise indication criteria for cochlear implantation and better planning of rehabilitation.International registered report identifier (irrid)DERR1-10.2196/38407.

Project description:Background: There exists a cohort of children and adults who exhibit an inordinately high degree of discomfort when experiencing what would be considered moderate and manageable levels of sensory input. That is, they show over-responsivity in the face of entirely typical sound, light, touch, taste, or smell inputs, and this occurs to such an extent that it interferes with their daily functioning and reaches clinical levels of dysfunction. What marks these individuals apart is that this sensory processing disorder (SPD) is observed in the absence of other symptom clusters that would result in a diagnosis of Autism, ADHD, or other neurodevelopmental disorders more typically associated with sensory processing difficulties. One major theory forwarded to account for these SPDs posits a deficit in multisensory integration, such that the various sensory inputs are not appropriately integrated into the central nervous system, leading to an overwhelming sensory-perceptual environment, and in turn to the sensory-defensive phenotype observed in these individuals. Methods: We tested whether children (6-16 years) with an over-responsive SPD phenotype (N = 12) integrated multisensory speech differently from age-matched typically-developing controls (TD: N = 12). Participants identified monosyllabic words while background noise level and sensory modality (auditory-alone, visual-alone, audiovisual) were varied in pseudorandom order. Improved word identification when speech was both seen and heard compared to when it was simply heard served to index multisensory speech integration. Results: School-aged children with an SPD show a deficit in the ability to benefit from the combination of both seen and heard speech inputs under noisy environmental conditions, suggesting that these children do not benefit from multisensory integrative processing to the same extent as their typically developing peers. In contrast, auditory-alone performance did not differ between the groups, signifying that this multisensory deficit is not simply due to impaired processing of auditory speech. Conclusions: Children with an over-responsive SPD show a substantial reduction in their ability to benefit from complementary audiovisual speech, to enhance speech perception in a noisy environment. This has clear implications for performance in the classroom and other learning environments. Impaired multisensory integration may contribute to sensory over-reactivity that is the definitional of SPD.

Project description:ObjectivesPeople with Schizophrenia (SZ) show deficits in auditory and audiovisual speech recognition. It is possible that these deficits are related to aberrant early sensory processing, combined with an impaired ability to utilize visual cues to improve speech recognition. In this electroencephalography study we tested this by having SZ and healthy controls (HC) identify different unisensory auditory and bisensory audiovisual syllables at different auditory noise levels.MethodsSZ (N = 24) and HC (N = 21) identified one of three different syllables (/da/, /ga/, /ta/) at three different noise levels (no, low, high). Half the trials were unisensory auditory and the other half provided additional visual input of moving lips. Task-evoked mediofrontal N1 and P2 brain potentials triggered to the onset of the auditory syllables were derived and related to behavioral performance.ResultsIn comparison to HC, SZ showed speech recognition deficits for unisensory and bisensory stimuli. These deficits were primarily found in the no noise condition. Paralleling these observations, reduced N1 amplitudes to unisensory and bisensory stimuli in SZ were found in the no noise condition. In HC the N1 amplitudes were positively related to the speech recognition performance, whereas no such relationships were found in SZ. Moreover, no group differences in multisensory speech recognition benefits and N1 suppression effects for bisensory stimuli were observed.ConclusionOur study suggests that reduced N1 amplitudes reflect early auditory and audiovisual speech processing deficits in SZ. The findings that the amplitude effects were confined to salient speech stimuli and the attenuated relationship with behavioral performance in patients compared to HC, indicates a diminished decoding of the auditory speech signals in SZs. Our study also revealed relatively intact multisensory benefits in SZs, which implies that the observed auditory and audiovisual speech recognition deficits were primarily related to aberrant processing of the auditory syllables.

Dataset Information

Dissociating Cortical Activity during Processing of Native and Non-Native Audiovisual Speech from Early to Late Infancy.

Publications

Dissociating Cortical Activity during Processing of Native and Non-Native Audiovisual Speech from Early to Late Infancy.

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