Approximately one out of every fifteen children entering elementary school in the U.S. has a significant developmental language impairment of unknown origin. Detailed studies of speech acoustics have significantly improved understanding and treatment of language impairments. These studies also provide the foundation needed to investigate the neural representation of speech. While peripheral representations have been extensively studied, relatively little is known about the cortical mechanisms that contribute to speech processing. The objective of this proposal is to define the distributed response of mammalian auditory cortex neurons to human speech sounds and to determine what experience-dependent changes in the neural representation of speech are possible.
The first aim of the project will be to precisely document the distributed response of auditory cortex neurons to speech sounds. Our preliminary results (from awake and anesthetized recordings in two distinct auditory fields) indicate that frequency bandwidth and forward masking time course appear to account for speech responses of most auditory cortex neurons.
The second aim will be to document the distributed cortical response to exaggerated speech sounds that have been used to treat language-learning impairments in thousands of children. Our initial findings indicate that the cortical activity patterns generated by modified speech are more distinct than the patterns generated by natural speech sounds.
The third aim will be to establish how cortical neurons are modified by exposure to natural and modified speech sounds. The results of the proposed studies will add to our understanding of neural mechanisms that could contribute to speech processing and learning in human auditory cortex. Insights derived from these studies will influence the use and development of behavioral and sensory rehabilitation of language impairments.
| Meyers, Eric; Sindhurakar, Anil; Choi, Rachel et al. (2016) The supination assessment task: An automated method for quantifying forelimb rotational function in rats. J Neurosci Methods 266:11-20 |
| Perez, Claudia A; Engineer, Crystal T; Jakkamsetti, Vikram et al. (2013) Different timescales for the neural coding of consonant and vowel sounds. Cereb Cortex 23:670-83 |
| Ranasinghe, K G; Vrana, W A; Matney, C J et al. (2013) Increasing diversity of neural responses to speech sounds across the central auditory pathway. Neuroscience 252:80-97 |
| Engineer, Crystal T; Perez, Claudia A; Carraway, Ryan S et al. (2013) Similarity of cortical activity patterns predicts generalization behavior. PLoS One 8:e78607 |
| Engineer, N D; Engineer, C T; Reed, A C et al. (2012) Inverted-U function relating cortical plasticity and task difficulty. Neuroscience 205:81-90 |
| Ranasinghe, Kamalini G; Vrana, William A; Matney, Chanel J et al. (2012) Neural mechanisms supporting robust discrimination of spectrally and temporally degraded speech. J Assoc Res Otolaryngol 13:527-42 |
| Ranasinghe, Kamalini G; Carraway, Ryan S; Borland, Michael S et al. (2012) Speech discrimination after early exposure to pulsed-noise or speech. Hear Res 289:1-12 |
| Kilgard, Michael P (2012) Harnessing plasticity to understand learning and treat disease. Trends Neurosci 35:715-22 |
| Porter, Benjamin A; Rosenthal, Tara R; Ranasinghe, Kamalini G et al. (2011) Discrimination of brief speech sounds is impaired in rats with auditory cortex lesions. Behav Brain Res 219:68-74 |
| Shetake, Jai A; Wolf, Jordan T; Cheung, Ryan J et al. (2011) Cortical activity patterns predict robust speech discrimination ability in noise. Eur J Neurosci 34:1823-38 |
Showing the most recent 10 out of 14 publications
