scholarly journals The Motor System's [Modest] Contribution to Speech Perception

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Stokes ◽  
Jonathan Venezia ◽  
Gregory Hickok

Recent evidence suggests that the motor system may have a facilitatory role in speech perception during noisy listening conditions. Studies clearly show an association between activity in auditory and motor speech systems, but also hint at a causal role for the motor system in noisy speech perception. However, in the most compelling "causal" studies performance was only measured at a single signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). If listening conditions must be noisy to invoke causal motor involvement, then effects will be contingent on the SNR at which they are tested. We used articulatory suppression to disrupt motor-speech areas while measuring phonemic identification across a range of SNRs. As controls, we also measured phoneme identification during passive listening, mandible gesturing, and foot-tapping conditions. Two-parameter (threshold, slope) psychometric functions were fit to the data in each condition. Our findings indicate: (1) no effect of experimental task on psychometric function slopes; (2) a small effect of articulatory suppression, in particular, on psychometric function thresholds. The size of the latter effect was 1 dB (~5% correct) on average, suggesting, at best, a minor modulatory role of the speech motor system in perception.

2017 ◽  
Vol 164 ◽  
pp. 77-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy I. Skipper ◽  
Joseph T. Devlin ◽  
Daniel R. Lametti

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly Michaelis ◽  
Makoto Miyakoshi ◽  
Gina Norato ◽  
Andrei V. Medvedev ◽  
Peter E. Turkeltaub

AbstractA longstanding debate has surrounded the role of the motor system in speech perception, but progress in this area has been limited by tasks that only examine isolated syllables and conflate decision-making with perception. Using an adaptive task that temporally isolates perception from decision-making, we examined an EEG signature of motor activity (sensorimotor μ/beta suppression) during the perception of auditory phonemes, auditory words, audiovisual words, and environmental sounds while holding difficulty constant at two levels (Easy/Hard). Results revealed left-lateralized sensorimotor μ/beta suppression that was related to perception of speech but not environmental sounds. Audiovisual word and phoneme stimuli showed enhanced left sensorimotor μ/beta suppression for correct relative to incorrect trials, while auditory word stimuli showed enhanced suppression for incorrect trials. Our results demonstrate that motor involvement in perception is left-lateralized, is specific to speech stimuli, and it not simply the result of domain-general processes. These results provide evidence for an interactive network for speech perception in which dorsal stream motor areas are dynamically engaged during the perception of speech depending on the characteristics of the speech signal. Crucially, this motor engagement has different effects on the perceptual outcome depending on the lexicality and modality of the speech stimulus.


2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 606-620 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Matchin ◽  
Kier Groulx ◽  
Gregory Hickok

Visual speech influences the perception of heard speech. A classic example of this is the McGurk effect, whereby an auditory /pa/ overlaid onto a visual /ka/ induces the fusion percept of /ta/. Recent behavioral and neuroimaging research has highlighted the importance of both articulatory representations and motor speech regions of the brain, particularly Broca's area, in audiovisual (AV) speech integration. Alternatively, AV speech integration may be accomplished by the sensory system through multisensory integration in the posterior STS. We assessed the claims regarding the involvement of the motor system in AV integration in two experiments: (i) examining the effect of articulatory suppression on the McGurk effect and (ii) determining if motor speech regions show an AV integration profile. The hypothesis regarding experiment (i) is that if the motor system plays a role in McGurk fusion, distracting the motor system through articulatory suppression should result in a reduction of McGurk fusion. The results of experiment (i) showed that articulatory suppression results in no such reduction, suggesting that the motor system is not responsible for the McGurk effect. The hypothesis of experiment (ii) was that if the brain activation to AV speech in motor regions (such as Broca's area) reflects AV integration, the profile of activity should reflect AV integration: AV > AO (auditory only) and AV > VO (visual only). The results of experiment (ii) demonstrate that motor speech regions do not show this integration profile, whereas the posterior STS does. Instead, activity in motor regions is task dependent. The combined results suggest that AV speech integration does not rely on the motor system.


Aphasiology ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 26 (9) ◽  
pp. 1103-1118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Riikka Möttönen ◽  
Kate E. Watkins

Author(s):  
Katherine Guérard ◽  
Sébastien Tremblay

In serial memory for spatial information, some studies showed that recall performance suffers when the distance between successive locations increases relatively to the size of the display in which they are presented (the path length effect; e.g., Parmentier et al., 2005) but not when distance is increased by enlarging the size of the display (e.g., Smyth & Scholey, 1994). In the present study, we examined the effect of varying the absolute and relative distance between to-be-remembered items on memory for spatial information. We manipulated path length using small (15″) and large (64″) screens within the same design. In two experiments, we showed that distance was disruptive mainly when it is varied relatively to a fixed reference frame, though increasing the size of the display also had a small deleterious effect on recall. The insertion of a retention interval did not influence these effects, suggesting that rehearsal plays a minor role in mediating the effects of distance on serial spatial memory. We discuss the potential role of perceptual organization in light of the pattern of results.


Author(s):  
Lidiya Derbenyova

The article explores the role of antropoetonyms in the reader’s “horizon of expectation” formation. As a kind of “text in the text”, antropoetonyms are concentrating a large amount of information on a minor part of the text, reflecting the main theme of the work. As a “text” this class of poetonyms performs a number of functions: transmission and storage of information, generation of new meanings, the function of “cultural memory”, which explains the readers’ “horizon of expectations”. In analyzing the context of the literary work we should consider the function of antropoetonyms in vertical context (the link between artistic and other texts, and the groundwork system of culture), as well as in the context of the horizontal one (times’ connection realized in the communication chain from the word to the text; the author’s intention). In this aspect, the role of antropoetonyms in the structure of the literary text is extremely significant because antropoetonyms convey an associative nature, generating a complex mechanism of allusions. It’s an open fact that they always transmit information about the preceding text and suggest a double decoding. On the one hand, the recipient decodes this information, on the other – accepts this as a sort of hidden, “secret” sense.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 311-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Salvatore Benvenga ◽  
Antonio Micali ◽  
Giovanni Pallio ◽  
Roberto Vita ◽  
Consuelo Malta ◽  
...  

Background: Cadmium (Cd) impairs gametogenesis and damages the blood-testis barrier. Objective: As the primary mechanism of Cd-induced damage is oxidative stress, the effects of two natural antioxidants, myo-inositol (MI) and seleno-L-methionine (Se), were evaluated in mice testes. Methods: Eighty-four male C57 BL/6J mice were divided into twelve groups: 0.9% NaCl (vehicle; 1 ml/kg/day i.p.); Se (0.2 mg/kg/day per os); Se (0.4 mg/kg/day per os); MI (360 mg/kg/day per os); MI plus Se (0.2 mg/kg/day); MI plus Se (0.4 mg/kg/day); CdCl2 (2 mg/kg/day i.p.) plus vehicle; CdCl2 plus MI; CdCl2 plus Se (0.2 mg/kg/day); CdCl2 plus Se (0.4 mg/kg/day); CdCl2 plus MI plus Se (0.2 mg/kg/day); and CdCl2 plus MI plus Se (0.4 mg/kg/day). After 14 days, testes were processed for biochemical, structural and immunohistochemical analyses. Results: CdCl2 increased iNOS and TNF-α expression and Malondialdehyde (MDA) levels, lowered glutathione (GSH) and testosterone, induced testicular lesions, and almost eliminated claudin-11 immunoreactivity. Se administration at 0.2 or 0.4 mg/kg significantly reduced iNOS and TNF-α expression, maintained GSH, MDA and testosterone levels, structural changes and low claudin-11 immunoreactivity. MI alone or associated with Se at 0.2 or 0.4 mg/kg significantly reduced iNOS and TNF-α expression and MDA levels, increased GSH and testosterone levels, ameliorated structural organization and increased claudin-11 patches number. Conclusion: We demonstrated a protective effect of MI, a minor role of Se and an evident positive role of the association between MI and Se on Cd-induced damages of the testis. MI alone or associated with Se might protect testes in subjects exposed to toxicants, at least to those with behavior similar to Cd.


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