We propose to continue to study the neurophysiological basis of speech perception with particular emphasis on the role in auditory and phonemic perception of middle and posterior fields in and near the left superior temporal sulcus (STS), using a comprehensive neuroimaging approach in healthy adults and children. The middle portion of the left STS (mSTS), just anterior and ventral to Heschl's gyrus (HG), is responsive to speech utterances including prelexical segments such as isolated syllables and phonemes, as well as non linguistic familiar sounds such as nonspeech human vocalizations and animal vocalizations. Our principal hypothesis is that the ventral pathway from HG to mSTS mediates the highly-efficient process of mapping the sequential, chronological acoustic information in speech waveforms onto linguistically relevant, highly-abstract and categorical representations stored in mSTS. We propose to examine the spatiotemporal organization of this pathway and its specificity for phonemic perception. The left STS posterior to HG (pSTS) has been implicated in the learning of non-native speech and other novel sounds, in the retrieval and rehearsal of speech (phonological processing) and other auditory sequences and in articulatory planning. The pSTS, bilaterally, also responds to the perception of biological motion. Our principal hypothesis is that a region of the left pSTS acts as a working-memory buffer, transiently storing veridical representations with low-levels of abstraction, that retain the sequential, chronological properties of sounds necessary for phonological processing and articulatory planning. Similarly, regions of the pSTS are responsive to biological motion because of the temporal dimension central to its perception. We propose to examine the common role of this region in speech and biological motion perception and in forming transient veridical representations for novel sounds. Children still developing phonemic perception compared to adults display shallower boundaries between phonemic categories. Children also display a pattern of activation for speech sounds that is more distributed, including left frontal and premotor cortex and a more posterior involvement of the temporal lobes. However, children demonstrate greater plasticity in the acquisition of non-native phoneme categories compared to adults. We propose to compare the ability of children and adults to learn a non-native phonetic contrast, presumably initially through formation of transient veridical representations with low-levels of abstraction in pSTS and eventually through formation of long-term highly-abstract, categorical neural representations in mSTS. We will examine the developing and mature brain with regard to the rate and limitations in the development of phonemic category representations and the neural mechanisms underlying acquisition of phonemic perception.

Public Health Relevance

In the proposed experiments, we provide a theoretical framework for defining the functional differentiation of middle and posterior temporal regions for speech and auditory perception. Understanding the respective role of these regions may suggest means of improving the treatment of disorders associated with deficits in phonemic perception and in particular dyslexia. Delineating the cortical areas involved in different aspects of speech processing is an important building block in the effort to develop a functional map of the cortex and for optimizing presurgical language mapping procedures. The proposed studies will also inform developmental models of speech acquisition.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01DC006287-08
Application #
8094342
Study Section
Language and Communication Study Section (LCOM)
Program Officer
Shekim, Lana O
Project Start
2003-07-01
Project End
2014-06-30
Budget Start
2011-07-01
Budget End
2012-06-30
Support Year
8
Fiscal Year
2011
Total Cost
$309,537
Indirect Cost
Name
Medical College of Wisconsin
Department
Neurology
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
937639060
City
Milwaukee
State
WI
Country
United States
Zip Code
53226
Liebenthal, Einat; Möttönen, Riikka (2018) An interactive model of auditory-motor speech perception. Brain Lang 187:33-40
Conant, Lisa L; Liebenthal, Einat; Desai, Anjali et al. (2017) The relationship between maternal education and the neural substrates of phoneme perception in children: Interactions between socioeconomic status and proficiency level. Brain Lang 171:14-22
Liebenthal, Einat; Silbersweig, David A; Stern, Emily (2016) The Language, Tone and Prosody of Emotions: Neural Substrates and Dynamics of Spoken-Word Emotion Perception. Front Neurosci 10:506
Conant, Lisa L; Liebenthal, Einat; Desai, Anjali et al. (2014) FMRI of phonemic perception and its relationship to reading development in elementary- to middle-school-age children. Neuroimage 89:192-202
Sabri, Merav; Humphries, Colin; Verber, Matthew et al. (2013) Perceptual demand modulates activation of human auditory cortex in response to task-irrelevant sounds. J Cogn Neurosci 25:1553-62
Sabri, Merav; Humphries, Colin; Binder, Jeffrey R et al. (2013) Neural events leading to and associated with detection of sounds under high processing load. Hum Brain Mapp 34:587-97
Liebenthal, Einat; Sabri, Merav; Beardsley, Scott A et al. (2013) Neural dynamics of phonological processing in the dorsal auditory stream. J Neurosci 33:15414-24
Mangalathu-Arumana, J; Beardsley, S A; Liebenthal, E (2012) Within-subject joint independent component analysis of simultaneous fMRI/ERP in an auditory oddball paradigm. Neuroimage 60:2247-57
Liebenthal, Einat; Desai, Rutvik; Ellingson, Michael M et al. (2010) Specialization along the left superior temporal sulcus for auditory categorization. Cereb Cortex 20:2958-70
Humphries, Colin; Liebenthal, Einat; Binder, Jeffrey R (2010) Tonotopic organization of human auditory cortex. Neuroimage 50:1202-11

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