TY - JOUR
T1 - Prediction in the service of comprehension: Modulated early brain responses to omitted speech segments
AU - Bendixen, Alexandra
AU - Scharinger, Mathias
AU - Strauß, Antje
AU - Obleser, Jonas
N1 - Funding Information:
M.S., A.S. and J.O. are funded by the Max Planck Society through a Max Planck Research group grant to J.O. A.B. is funded by the DFG Cluster of Excellence 1077 “Hearing4all” . Data collection of Experiment 2 was supported by the German Research Foundation [Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG, SCH 375/20-1]. SCDs were calculated and plotted with the aid of a plug-in for EEGlab ( Delorme & Makeig, 2004 ) written by Andreas Widmann, University of Leipzig, Germany. VARETA source localization was performed with scripts provided by Nelson Trujillo-Barreto, University of Havana, Cuba. The authors thank Christina Otto and Julia Merrill for help during stimulus preparation, Elizabeth Kelly for proofreading the manuscript, Erich Schröger for the opportunity to conduct the measurements of Experiment 2, as well as Ina Koch and Julia Steinbrück for assistance in data acquisition.
Copyright:
Copyright 2017 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2014/4
Y1 - 2014/4
N2 - Speech signals are often compromised by disruptions originating from external (e.g., masking noise) or internal (e.g., inaccurate articulation) sources. Speech comprehension thus entails detecting and replacing missing information based on predictive and restorative neural mechanisms. The present study targets predictive mechanisms by investigating the influence of a speech segment's predictability on early, modality-specific electrophysiological responses to this segment's omission. Predictability was manipulated in simple physical terms in a single-word framework (Experiment 1) or in more complex semantic terms in a sentence framework (Experiment 2). In both experiments, final consonants of the German words Lachs ([laks], salmon) or Latz ([lats], bib) were occasionally omitted, resulting in the syllable La ([la], no semantic meaning), while brain responses were measured with multi-channel electroencephalography (EEG). In both experiments, the occasional presentation of the fragment La elicited a larger omission response when the final speech segment had been predictable. The omission response occurred ~125-165msec after the expected onset of the final segment and showed characteristics of the omission mismatch negativity (MMN), with generators in auditory cortical areas. Suggestive of a general auditory predictive mechanism at work, this main observation was robust against varying source of predictive information or attentional allocation, differing between the two experiments. Source localization further suggested the omission response enhancement by predictability to emerge from left superior temporal gyrus and left angular gyrus in both experiments, with additional experiment-specific contributions. These results are consistent with the existence of predictive coding mechanisms in the central auditory system, and suggestive of the general predictive properties of the auditory system to support spoken word recognition.
AB - Speech signals are often compromised by disruptions originating from external (e.g., masking noise) or internal (e.g., inaccurate articulation) sources. Speech comprehension thus entails detecting and replacing missing information based on predictive and restorative neural mechanisms. The present study targets predictive mechanisms by investigating the influence of a speech segment's predictability on early, modality-specific electrophysiological responses to this segment's omission. Predictability was manipulated in simple physical terms in a single-word framework (Experiment 1) or in more complex semantic terms in a sentence framework (Experiment 2). In both experiments, final consonants of the German words Lachs ([laks], salmon) or Latz ([lats], bib) were occasionally omitted, resulting in the syllable La ([la], no semantic meaning), while brain responses were measured with multi-channel electroencephalography (EEG). In both experiments, the occasional presentation of the fragment La elicited a larger omission response when the final speech segment had been predictable. The omission response occurred ~125-165msec after the expected onset of the final segment and showed characteristics of the omission mismatch negativity (MMN), with generators in auditory cortical areas. Suggestive of a general auditory predictive mechanism at work, this main observation was robust against varying source of predictive information or attentional allocation, differing between the two experiments. Source localization further suggested the omission response enhancement by predictability to emerge from left superior temporal gyrus and left angular gyrus in both experiments, with additional experiment-specific contributions. These results are consistent with the existence of predictive coding mechanisms in the central auditory system, and suggestive of the general predictive properties of the auditory system to support spoken word recognition.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84896285538&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.cortex.2014.01.001
DO - 10.1016/j.cortex.2014.01.001
M3 - Journal articles
C2 - 24561233
AN - SCOPUS:84896285538
SN - 0010-9452
VL - 53
SP - 9
EP - 26
JO - Cortex
JF - Cortex
IS - 1
ER -
