How neural systems represent information beyond the contents of sensory stimuli is a recurrent theme for models of perception and cognition—in particular in speech and language research: Speech is arrhythmic, yet steady oscillatory coupling to speech, so-called entrainment, still occurs. In addition, oscillatory coupling to linguistic information that does not have any physical counterpart has recently been described. We propose here that oscillatory responses to speech are not always entrained by exogenous sensory signals, but may also reflect endogenous rhythms that subserve the internal generation of linguistic representations. While acoustic information in speech provides punctate opportunities for exogenous entrainment proper, endogenous cortical rhythms may segment speech intosemantic and syntactic structures in a form of perceptual inference. The proposed synthesis of endogenous and exogenous information can account for one of the hardest inference problems the human brain faces: the comprehension of language.
Distinct cortical rhythms in speech and language processing and some more: a commentary on Meyer, Sun, & Martin (2019)
