Classical views of speech perception argue that the static and dynamic characteristics of spectral energy peaks (formants) are the acoustic features that underpin phoneme recognition. Here we use representations where the amplitude modulations of sub-band filtered speech are described, precisely, in terms of co-sinusoidal pulses. These pulses are…

The current study examined auditory processing deficits in dyslexia using a dichotic pitch stimulus and functional MRI. Cortical activation by the dichotic pitch task occurred in bilateral Heschl's gyri, right planum temporale, and right superior temporal sulcus. Adolescents with dyslexia, relative to age-matched controls, illustrated greater…

Spontaneous beat gestures are an integral part of the paralinguistic context during face-to-face conversations. Here we investigated the time course of beat-speech integration in speech perception by measuring ERPs evoked by words pronounced with or without an accompanying beat gesture, while participants watched a spoken discourse. Words…

ERP responses to spoken words are sensitive to both rhyming effects and effects of associated spelling patterns. Are such effects automatically elicited by spoken words or dependent on selectively attending to phonology? To address this question, ERP responses to spoken word pairs were investigated under two equally demanding listening tasks that…

A left-hemispheric cortico-cortical network involving areas of the temporoparietal junction (Tpj) and the posterior inferior frontal gyrus (pIFG) is thought to support sensorimotor integration of speech perception into articulatory motor activation, but how this network links with the lip area of the primary motor cortex (M1) during speech…

Blind people can learn to understand speech at ultra-high syllable rates (ca. 20 syllables/s), a capability associated with hemodynamic activation of the central-visual system. To further elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying this skill, magnetoencephalographic (MEG) measurements during listening to sentence utterances were cross-correlated…

The effect of exposure to the contextual features of the /pt/ cluster was investigated in native-English and native-Polish listeners using behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) methodology. Both groups experience the /pt/ cluster in their languages, but only the Polish group experiences the cluster in the context of word onset examined in…

Visual emotionally charged stimuli have been shown to elicit early electrophysiological responses (e.g., Ihssen, Heim, & Keil, 2007; Schupp, Junghofer, Weike, & Hamm, 2003; Stolarova, Keil, & Moratti, 2006). We presented isolated words to listeners, and observed, using generalized additive modeling, oscillations in the upper part of the delta…

This study investigates the specificity of predictive coding in spoken word comprehension using event-related potentials (ERPs). We measured word-evoked ERPs in Catalan speakers listening to semantically constraining sentences produced in their native regional accent (Experiment 1) or in a non-native accent (Experiment 2). Semantically anomalous…

Recent experiments showed that the perception of vowel length by German listeners exhibits the characteristics of categorical perception. The present study sought to find the neural activity reflecting categorical vowel length and the short-long boundary by examining the processing of non-contrastive durations and categorical length using MEG.…

The human temporal lobe is well known to be critical for language comprehension. Previous physiological research has focused mainly on non-invasive neuroimaging and electrophysiological techniques with each approach requiring averaging across many trials and subjects. The results of these studies have implicated extended anatomical regions in…

Phonation is a fundamental feature of human communication. Control of phonation in the context of speech-language disturbances has traditionally been considered a characteristic of lesions to subcortical structures and pathways. Evidence suggests however, that cortical lesions may also implicate phonation. We carried out acoustic and perceptual…

Listeners perceive speech sounds relative to context. Contextual influences might differ over hemispheres if different types of auditory processing are lateralized. Hemispheric differences in contextual influences on vowel perception were investigated by presenting speech targets and both speech and non-speech contexts to listeners' right or left…

Conceptual metaphor theory suggests that knowledge is structured around metaphorical mappings derived from physical experience. Segregated processing of object properties in sensory cortex allows testing of the hypothesis that metaphor processing recruits activity in domain-specific sensory cortex. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging…

Speech production is inextricably linked to speech perception, yet they are usually investigated in isolation. In this study, we employed a verbal-repetition task to identify the neural substrates of speech processing with two ends active simultaneously using functional MRI. Subjects verbally repeated auditory stimuli containing an ambiguous vowel…