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Monkey vocal tracts are speech-ready.

ABSTRACT: For four decades, the inability of nonhuman primates to produce human speech sounds has been claimed to stem from limitations in their vocal tract anatomy, a conclusion based on plaster casts made from the vocal tract of a monkey cadaver. We used x-ray videos to quantify vocal tract dynamics in living macaques during vocalization, facial displays, and feeding. We demonstrate that the macaque vocal tract could easily produce an adequate range of speech sounds to support spoken language, showing that previous techniques based on postmortem samples drastically underestimated primate vocal capabilities. Our findings imply that the evolution of human speech capabilities required neural changes rather than modifications of vocal anatomy. Macaques have a speech-ready vocal tract but lack a speech-ready brain to control it.

SUBMITTER: Fitch WT

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5148209 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Monkey vocal tracts are speech-ready.

Fitch W Tecumseh WT de Boer Bart B Mathur Neil N Ghazanfar Asif A AA

Science advances 20161209 12

For four decades, the inability of nonhuman primates to produce human speech sounds has been claimed to stem from limitations in their vocal tract anatomy, a conclusion based on plaster casts made from the vocal tract of a monkey cadaver. We used x-ray videos to quantify vocal tract dynamics in living macaques during vocalization, facial displays, and feeding. We demonstrate that the macaque vocal tract could easily produce an adequate range of speech sounds to support spoken language, showing t ...[more]

PMID: 27957536

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Comment on "Monkey vocal tracts are speech-ready".

Project description:Monkey vocal tracts are capable of producing monkey speech, not the full range of articulate human speech. The evolution of human speech entailed both anatomy and brains. Fitch, de Boer, Mathur, and Ghazanfar in Science Advances claim that "monkey vocal tracts are speech-ready," and conclude that "…the evolution of human speech capabilities required neural change rather than modifications of vocal anatomy." Neither premise is consistent either with the data presented and the conclusions reached by de Boer and Fitch themselves in their own published papers on the role of anatomy in the evolution of human speech or with the body of independent studies published since the 1950s.

| S-EPMC5501499 | biostudies-other

Response to Lieberman on "Monkey vocal tracts are speech-ready".

Project description:Macaques do have a speech-ready vocal tract, but lack a speech-ready brain to control it.

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Internal states and extrinsic factors both determine monkey vocal production.

Project description:A key question for understanding speech evolution is whether or not the vocalizations of our closest living relatives-nonhuman primates-represent the precursors to speech. Some believe that primate vocalizations are not volitional but are instead inextricably linked to internal states like arousal and thus bear little resemblance to human speech. Others disagree and believe that since many primates can use their vocalizations strategically, this demonstrates a degree of voluntary vocal control. In the current study, we present a behavioral paradigm that reliably elicits different types of affiliative vocalizations from marmoset monkeys while measuring their heart rate fluctuations using noninvasive electromyography. By modulating both the physical distance between marmosets and the sensory information available to them, we find that arousal levels are linked, but not inextricably, to vocal production. Different arousal levels are, generally, associated with changes in vocal acoustics and the drive to produce different call types. However, in contexts where marmosets are interacting, the production of these different call types is also affected by extrinsic factors such as the timing of a conspecific's vocalization. These findings suggest that variability in vocal output as a function of context might reflect trade-offs between the drive to perpetuate vocal contact and conserving energy.

| S-EPMC5899479 | biostudies-literature

3D dynamic MRI of the vocal tract during natural speech.

Project description:PURPOSE:To develop and evaluate a technique for 3D dynamic MRI of the full vocal tract at high temporal resolution during natural speech. METHODS:We demonstrate 2.4 × 2.4 × 5.8 mm3 spatial resolution, 61-ms temporal resolution, and a 200 × 200 × 70 mm3 FOV. The proposed method uses 3D gradient-echo imaging with a custom upper-airway coil, a minimum-phase slab excitation, stack-of-spirals readout, pseudo golden-angle view order in kx -ky , linear Cartesian order along kz , and spatiotemporal finite difference constrained reconstruction, with 13-fold acceleration. This technique is evaluated using in vivo vocal tract airway data from 2 healthy subjects acquired at 1.5T scanner, 1 with synchronized audio, with 2 tasks during production of natural speech, and via comparison with interleaved multislice 2D dynamic MRI. RESULTS:This technique captured known dynamics of vocal tract articulators during natural speech tasks including tongue gestures during the production of consonants "s" and "l" and of consonant-vowel syllables, and was additionally consistent with 2D dynamic MRI. Coordination of lingual (tongue) movements for consonants is demonstrated via volume-of-interest analysis. Vocal tract area function dynamics revealed critical lingual constriction events along the length of the vocal tract for consonants and vowels. CONCLUSION:We demonstrate feasibility of 3D dynamic MRI of the full vocal tract, with spatiotemporal resolution adequate to visualize lingual movements for consonants and vocal tact shaping during natural productions of consonant-vowel syllables, without requiring multiple repetitions.

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Learning and adaptation in speech production without a vocal tract.

Project description:How is the complex audiomotor skill of speaking learned? To what extent does it depend on the specific characteristics of the vocal tract? Here, we developed a touchscreen-based speech synthesizer to examine learning of speech production independent of the vocal tract. Participants were trained to reproduce heard vowel targets by reaching to locations on the screen without visual feedback and receiving endpoint vowel sound auditory feedback that depended continuously on touch location. Participants demonstrated learning as evidenced by rapid increases in accuracy and consistency in the production of trained targets. This learning generalized to productions of novel vowel targets. Subsequent to learning, sensorimotor adaptation was observed in response to changes in the location-sound mapping. These findings suggest that participants learned adaptable sensorimotor maps allowing them to produce desired vowel sounds. These results have broad implications for understanding the acquisition of speech motor control.

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Monkey drumming reveals common networks for perceiving vocal and nonvocal communication sounds.

Project description:Salient sounds such as those created by drumming can serve as means of nonvocal acoustic communication in addition to vocal sounds. Despite the ubiquity of drumming across human cultures, its origins and the brain regions specialized in processing such signals remain unexplored. Here, we report that an important animal model for vocal communication, the macaque monkey, also displays drumming behavior, and we exploit this finding to show that vocal and nonvocal communication sounds are represented by overlapping networks in the brain's temporal lobe. Observing social macaque groups, we found that these animals use artificial objects to produce salient periodic sounds, similar to acoustic gestures. Behavioral tests confirmed that these drumming sounds attract the attention of listening monkeys similarly as conspecific vocalizations. Furthermore, in a preferential looking experiment, drumming sounds influenced the way monkeys viewed their conspecifics, suggesting that drumming serves as a multimodal signal of social dominance. Finally, by using high-resolution functional imaging we identified those brain regions preferentially activated by drumming sounds or by vocalizations and found that the representations of both these communication sounds overlap in caudal auditory cortex and the amygdala. The similar behavioral responses to drumming and vocal sounds, and their shared neural representation, suggest a common origin of primate vocal and nonvocal communication systems and support the notion of a gestural origin of speech and music.

| S-EPMC2755465 | biostudies-literature

Vocal Tract Images Reveal Neural Representations of Sensorimotor Transformation During Speech Imitation.

Project description:Imitating speech necessitates the transformation from sensory targets to vocal tract motor output, yet little is known about the representational basis of this process in the human brain. Here, we address this question by using real-time MR imaging (rtMRI) of the vocal tract and functional MRI (fMRI) of the brain in a speech imitation paradigm. Participants trained on imitating a native vowel and a similar nonnative vowel that required lip rounding. Later, participants imitated these vowels and an untrained vowel pair during separate fMRI and rtMRI runs. Univariate fMRI analyses revealed that regions including left inferior frontal gyrus were more active during sensorimotor transformation (ST) and production of nonnative vowels, compared with native vowels; further, ST for nonnative vowels activated somatomotor cortex bilaterally, compared with ST of native vowels. Using test representational similarity analysis (RSA) models constructed from participants' vocal tract images and from stimulus formant distances, we found that RSA searchlight analyses of fMRI data showed either type of model could be represented in somatomotor, temporal, cerebellar, and hippocampal neural activation patterns during ST. We thus provide the first evidence of widespread and robust cortical and subcortical neural representation of vocal tract and/or formant parameters, during prearticulatory ST.

| S-EPMC5939209 | biostudies-literature

The interrelationship between the face and vocal tract configuration during audiovisual speech.

Project description:It is well established that speech perception is improved when we are able to see the speaker talking along with hearing their voice, especially when the speech is noisy. While we have a good understanding of where speech integration occurs in the brain, it is unclear how visual and auditory cues are combined to improve speech perception. One suggestion is that integration can occur as both visual and auditory cues arise from a common generator: the vocal tract. Here, we investigate whether facial and vocal tract movements are linked during speech production by comparing videos of the face and fast magnetic resonance (MR) image sequences of the vocal tract. The joint variation in the face and vocal tract was extracted using an application of principal components analysis (PCA), and we demonstrate that MR image sequences can be reconstructed with high fidelity using only the facial video and PCA. Reconstruction fidelity was significantly higher when images from the two sequences corresponded in time, and including implicit temporal information by combining contiguous frames also led to a significant increase in fidelity. A "Bubbles" technique was used to identify which areas of the face were important for recovering information about the vocal tract, and vice versa, on a frame-by-frame basis. Our data reveal that there is sufficient information in the face to recover vocal tract shape during speech. In addition, the facial and vocal tract regions that are important for reconstruction are those that are used to generate the acoustic speech signal.

| S-EPMC7768679 | biostudies-literature

Vocal Parameters of Speech and Singing Covary and Are Related to Vocal Attractiveness, Body Measures, and Sociosexuality: A Cross-Cultural Study.

Project description:Perceived vocal attractiveness and measured sex-dimorphic vocal parameters are both associated with underlying individual qualities. Research tends to focus on speech but singing is another highly evolved communication system that has distinct and universal features with analogs in other species, and it is relevant in mating. Both speaking and singing voice provides relevant information about its producer. We tested whether speech and singing function as "backup signals" that indicate similar underlying qualities. Using a sample of 81 men and 86 women from Brazil and the Czech Republic, we investigated vocal attractiveness rated from speech and singing and its association with fundamental frequency (F0), apparent vocal tract length (VTL), body characteristics, and sociosexuality. F0, VTL, and rated attractiveness of singing and speaking voice strongly correlated within the same individual. Lower-pitched speech in men, higher-pitched speech and singing in women, individuals who like to sing more, and singing of individuals with a higher pitch modulation were perceived as more attractive. In men, physical size positively predicted speech and singing attractiveness. Male speech but not singing attractiveness was associated with higher sociosexuality. Lower-pitched male speech was related to higher sociosexuality, while lower-pitched male singing was linked to lower sociosexuality. Similarly, shorter speech VTL and longer singing VTL predicted higher sociosexuality in women. Different vocal displays function as "backup signals" cueing to attractiveness and body size, but their relation to sexual strategies in men and women differs. Both singing and speech may indicate evolutionarily relevant individual qualities shaped by sexual selection.

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Articulatory and Vocal Fold Movement Patterns During Loud Speech in Children With Cerebral Palsy.

Project description:PurposeSpeech motor control changes underlying louder speech are poorly understood in children with cerebral palsy (CP). The current study evaluates changes in the oral articulatory and laryngeal subsystems in children with CP and their typically developing (TD) peers during louder speech.MethodNine children with CP and nine age- and sex-matched TD peers produced sentence repetitions in two conditions: (a) with their habitual rate and loudness and (b) with louder speech. Lip and jaw movements were recorded with optical motion capture. Acoustic recordings were obtained to evaluate vocal fold articulation.ResultsChildren with CP had smaller jaw movements, larger lower lip movements, slower jaw speeds, faster lip speeds, reduced interarticulator coordination, reduced low-frequency spectral tilt, and lower cepstral peak prominences (CPP) in comparison to their TD peers. Both groups produced louder speech with larger lip and jaw movements, faster lip and jaw speeds, increased temporal coordination, reduced movement variability, reduced spectral tilt, and increased CPP.ConclusionsChildren with CP differ from their TD peers in the speech motor control of both the oral articulatory and laryngeal subsystems. Both groups alter oral articulatory and vocal fold movements when cued to speak loudly, which may contribute to the increased intelligibility associated with louder speech.Supplemental materialhttps://doi.org/10.23641/asha.24970302.

| S-EPMC11000802 | biostudies-literature

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