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Nourski KV, Steinschneider M, Rhone AE, Berger JI, Dappen ER, Kawasaki H, Howard III MA. Intracranial electrophysiology of spectrally degraded speech in the human cortex. Front Hum Neurosci 2024; 17:1334742. [PMID: 38318272 PMCID: PMC10839784 DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2023.1334742] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/07/2023] [Accepted: 12/28/2023] [Indexed: 02/07/2024] Open
Abstract
Introduction Cochlear implants (CIs) are the treatment of choice for severe to profound hearing loss. Variability in CI outcomes remains despite advances in technology and is attributed in part to differences in cortical processing. Studying these differences in CI users is technically challenging. Spectrally degraded stimuli presented to normal-hearing individuals approximate input to the central auditory system in CI users. This study used intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) to investigate cortical processing of spectrally degraded speech. Methods Participants were adult neurosurgical epilepsy patients. Stimuli were utterances /aba/ and /ada/, spectrally degraded using a noise vocoder (1-4 bands) or presented without vocoding. The stimuli were presented in a two-alternative forced choice task. Cortical activity was recorded using depth and subdural iEEG electrodes. Electrode coverage included auditory core in posteromedial Heschl's gyrus (HGPM), superior temporal gyrus (STG), ventral and dorsal auditory-related areas, and prefrontal and sensorimotor cortex. Analysis focused on high gamma (70-150 Hz) power augmentation and alpha (8-14 Hz) suppression. Results Chance task performance occurred with 1-2 spectral bands and was near-ceiling for clear stimuli. Performance was variable with 3-4 bands, permitting identification of good and poor performers. There was no relationship between task performance and participants demographic, audiometric, neuropsychological, or clinical profiles. Several response patterns were identified based on magnitude and differences between stimulus conditions. HGPM responded strongly to all stimuli. A preference for clear speech emerged within non-core auditory cortex. Good performers typically had strong responses to all stimuli along the dorsal stream, including posterior STG, supramarginal, and precentral gyrus; a minority of sites in STG and supramarginal gyrus had a preference for vocoded stimuli. In poor performers, responses were typically restricted to clear speech. Alpha suppression was more pronounced in good performers. In contrast, poor performers exhibited a greater involvement of posterior middle temporal gyrus when listening to clear speech. Discussion Responses to noise-vocoded speech provide insights into potential factors underlying CI outcome variability. The results emphasize differences in the balance of neural processing along the dorsal and ventral stream between good and poor performers, identify specific cortical regions that may have diagnostic and prognostic utility, and suggest potential targets for neuromodulation-based CI rehabilitation strategies.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kirill V. Nourski
- Department of Neurosurgery, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States
- Iowa Neuroscience Institute, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States
| | - Mitchell Steinschneider
- Department of Neurosurgery, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States
- Departments of Neurology and Neuroscience, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY, United States
| | - Ariane E. Rhone
- Department of Neurosurgery, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States
| | - Joel I. Berger
- Department of Neurosurgery, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States
| | - Emily R. Dappen
- Department of Neurosurgery, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States
- Iowa Neuroscience Institute, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States
| | - Hiroto Kawasaki
- Department of Neurosurgery, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States
| | - Matthew A. Howard III
- Department of Neurosurgery, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States
- Iowa Neuroscience Institute, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States
- Pappajohn Biomedical Institute, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States
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Lumaca M, Bonetti L, Brattico E, Baggio G, Ravignani A, Vuust P. High-fidelity transmission of auditory symbolic material is associated with reduced right-left neuroanatomical asymmetry between primary auditory regions. Cereb Cortex 2023:7005170. [PMID: 36702496 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhad009] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/01/2022] [Revised: 01/05/2023] [Accepted: 01/06/2023] [Indexed: 01/28/2023] Open
Abstract
The intergenerational stability of auditory symbolic systems, such as music, is thought to rely on brain processes that allow the faithful transmission of complex sounds. Little is known about the functional and structural aspects of the human brain which support this ability, with a few studies pointing to the bilateral organization of auditory networks as a putative neural substrate. Here, we further tested this hypothesis by examining the role of left-right neuroanatomical asymmetries between auditory cortices. We collected neuroanatomical images from a large sample of participants (nonmusicians) and analyzed them with Freesurfer's surface-based morphometry method. Weeks after scanning, the same individuals participated in a laboratory experiment that simulated music transmission: the signaling games. We found that high accuracy in the intergenerational transmission of an artificial tone system was associated with reduced rightward asymmetry of cortical thickness in Heschl's sulcus. Our study suggests that the high-fidelity copying of melodic material may rely on the extent to which computational neuronal resources are distributed across hemispheres. Our data further support the role of interhemispheric brain organization in the cultural transmission and evolution of auditory symbolic systems.
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Affiliation(s)
- Massimo Lumaca
- Center for Music in the Brain, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University & The Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus/Aalborg, Aarhus C 8000, Denmark
| | - Leonardo Bonetti
- Center for Music in the Brain, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University & The Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus/Aalborg, Aarhus C 8000, Denmark.,Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing, Linacre College, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 9BX, United Kingdom.,Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 7JX, United Kingdom.,Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Bologna 40127, Italy
| | - Elvira Brattico
- Center for Music in the Brain, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University & The Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus/Aalborg, Aarhus C 8000, Denmark.,Department of Education, Psychology, Communication, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari 70122, Italy
| | - Giosuè Baggio
- Language Acquisition and Language Processing Lab, Department of Language and Literature, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim 7941, Norway
| | - Andrea Ravignani
- Center for Music in the Brain, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University & The Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus/Aalborg, Aarhus C 8000, Denmark.,Comparative Bioacoustics Group, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen 6525 XD, Netherlands
| | - Peter Vuust
- Center for Music in the Brain, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University & The Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus/Aalborg, Aarhus C 8000, Denmark
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Qiao Y, Zhu M, Sun W, Sun Y, Guo H, Shang Y. Intrinsic brain activity reorganization contributes to long-term compensation of higher-order hearing abilities in single-sided deafness. Front Neurosci 2022; 16:935834. [PMID: 36090279 PMCID: PMC9453152 DOI: 10.3389/fnins.2022.935834] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/04/2022] [Accepted: 08/01/2022] [Indexed: 11/24/2022] Open
Abstract
Single-sided deafness (SSD) is an extreme case of partial hearing deprivation and results in a significant decline in higher-order hearing abilities, including sound localization and speech-in-noise recognition. Clinical studies have reported that patients with SSD recover from these higher-order hearing abilities to some extent over time. Neuroimaging studies have observed extensive brain functional plasticity in patients with SSD. However, studies investigating the role of plasticity in functional compensation, particularly those investigating the relationship between intrinsic brain activity alterations and higher-order hearing abilities, are still limited. In this study, we used resting-state functional MRI to investigate intrinsic brain activity, measured by the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF), in 19 patients with left SSD, 17 patients with right SSD, and 21 normal hearing controls (NHs). All patients with SSD had durations of deafness longer than 2 years. Decreased ALFF values in the bilateral precuneus (PCUN), lingual gyrus, and left middle frontal gyrus were observed in patients with SSD compared with the values of NHs. Longer durations of deafness were correlated with better hearing abilities, as well as higher ALFF values in the left inferior parietal lobule, the angular gyrus, the middle occipital gyrus, the bilateral PCUN, and the posterior cingulate gyrus. Moreover, we observed a generally consistent trend of correlation between ALFF values and higher-order hearing abilities in specific brain areas in patients with SSD. That is, better abilities were correlated with lower ALFF values in the frontal regions and higher ALFF values in the PCUN and surrounding parietal-occipital areas. Furthermore, mediation analysis revealed that the ALFF values in the PCUN were a significant mediator of the relationship between the duration of deafness and higher-order hearing abilities. Our study reveals significant plasticity of intrinsic brain activity in patients with SSD and suggests that reorganization of intrinsic brain activity may be one of the compensatory mechanisms that facilitate improvement in higher-order hearing abilities in these patients over time.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yufei Qiao
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Beijing, China
| | - Min Zhu
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Beijing, China
| | - Wen Sun
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Beijing, China
| | - Yang Sun
- School of Educational Science, Shenyang Normal University, Shengyang, China
| | - Hua Guo
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Center for Biomedical Imaging Research, School of Medicine, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
| | - Yingying Shang
- Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Beijing, China
- *Correspondence: Yingying Shang
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Ruthig P, Schönwiesner M. Common principles in the lateralisation of auditory cortex structure and function for vocal communication in primates and rodents. Eur J Neurosci 2022; 55:827-845. [PMID: 34984748 DOI: 10.1111/ejn.15590] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/25/2021] [Accepted: 12/24/2021] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
Abstract
This review summarises recent findings on the lateralisation of communicative sound processing in the auditory cortex (AC) of humans, non-human primates, and rodents. Functional imaging in humans has demonstrated a left hemispheric preference for some acoustic features of speech, but it is unclear to which degree this is caused by bottom-up acoustic feature selectivity or top-down modulation from language areas. Although non-human primates show a less pronounced functional lateralisation in AC, the properties of AC fields and behavioral asymmetries are qualitatively similar. Rodent studies demonstrate microstructural circuits that might underlie bottom-up acoustic feature selectivity in both hemispheres. Functionally, the left AC in the mouse appears to be specifically tuned to communication calls, whereas the right AC may have a more 'generalist' role. Rodents also show anatomical AC lateralisation, such as differences in size and connectivity. Several of these functional and anatomical characteristics are also lateralized in human AC. Thus, complex vocal communication processing shares common features among rodents and primates. We argue that a synthesis of results from humans, non-human primates, and rodents is necessary to identify the neural circuitry of vocal communication processing. However, data from different species and methods are often difficult to compare. Recent advances may enable better integration of methods across species. Efforts to standardise data formats and analysis tools would benefit comparative research and enable synergies between psychological and biological research in the area of vocal communication processing.
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Affiliation(s)
- Philip Ruthig
- Faculty of Life Sciences, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Sachsen.,Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig
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Wang H, Sun Y, Lan F, Liu Y. Altered brain network topology related to working memory in internet addiction. J Behav Addict 2020; 9:325-338. [PMID: 32644933 PMCID: PMC8939409 DOI: 10.1556/2006.2020.00020] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/26/2019] [Revised: 03/28/2020] [Accepted: 04/15/2020] [Indexed: 12/02/2022] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND AIMS The working memory (WM) ability of internet addicts and the topology underlying the WM processing in internet addiction (IA) are poorly understood. In this study, we employed a graph theoretical framework to characterize the topological properties of the IA brain network in the source cortical space during WM task. METHODS A sample of 24 subjects with IA and 23 matched healthy controls (HCs) performed visual 2-back task. Exact Low Resolution Electromagnetic Tomography was adopted to project the pre-processed EEG signals into source space. Subsequently, Lagged phase synchronization was calculated between all pairs of Brodmann areas, the graph theoretical approaches were then employed to estimate the brain topological properties of all participants during the WM task. RESULTS We found better WM behavioral performance in IA subjects compared with the HCs. Moreover, compared to the HC group, more integrated and hierarchical brain network was revealed in the IA subjects in alpha band. And altered regional centrality was mainly resided in frontal and limbic lobes. In addition, significant relationships between the IA severity and the significant altered graph indices were found. CONCLUSIONS In conclusion, these findings provide evidence to support the notion that altered topological configuration may underline changed WM function observed in IA.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hongxia Wang
- School of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Da Lian, 116029, China,Department of Psychology, Renmin University of China, Beijing, 100872, China
| | - Yan Sun
- School of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Da Lian, 116029, China,Corresponding author’s e-mail:
| | - Fan Lan
- School of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Da Lian, 116029, China
| | - Yan Liu
- School of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Da Lian, 116029, China
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Musicians use speech-specific areas when processing tones: The key to their superior linguistic competence? Behav Brain Res 2020; 390:112662. [PMID: 32442547 DOI: 10.1016/j.bbr.2020.112662] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/07/2019] [Revised: 04/21/2020] [Accepted: 04/22/2020] [Indexed: 11/23/2022]
Abstract
It is known that musicians compared to non-musicians have some superior speech and language competence, yet the mechanisms how musical training leads to this advantage are not well specified. This event-related fMRI study confirmed that musicians outperformed non-musicians in processing not only of musical tones but also syllables and identified a network differentiating musicians from non-musicians during processing of linguistic sounds. Within this network, the activation of bilateral superior temporal gyrus was shared with all subjects during processing of the acoustically well-matched musical and linguistic sounds, and with the activation distinguishing tones with a complex harmonic spectrum (bowed tone) from a simpler one (plucked tone). These results confirm that better speech processing in musicians relies on improved cross-domain spectral analysis. Activation of left posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), premotor cortex, inferior frontal and fusiform gyrus (FG) also distinguishing musicians from non-musicians during syllable processing overlapped with the activation segregating linguistic from musical sounds in all subjects. Since these brain-regions were not involved during tone processing in non-musicians, they could code for functions which are specialized for speech. Musicians recruited pSTS and FG during tone processing, thus these speech-specialized brain-areas processed musical sounds in the presence of musical training. This study shows that the linguistic advantage of musicians is linked not only to improved cross-domain spectral analysis, but also to the functional adaptation of brain resources that are specialized for speech, but accessible to the domain of music in the presence of musical training.
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Lumaca M, Kleber B, Brattico E, Vuust P, Baggio G. Functional connectivity in human auditory networks and the origins of variation in the transmission of musical systems. eLife 2019; 8:48710. [PMID: 31658945 PMCID: PMC6819097 DOI: 10.7554/elife.48710] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/23/2019] [Accepted: 10/09/2019] [Indexed: 02/02/2023] Open
Abstract
Music producers, whether original composers or performers, vary in their ability to acquire and faithfully transmit music. This form of variation may serve as a mechanism for the emergence of new traits in musical systems. In this study, we aim to investigate whether individual differences in the social learning and transmission of music relate to intrinsic neural dynamics of auditory processing systems. We combined auditory and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with an interactive laboratory model of cultural transmission, the signaling game, in an experiment with a large cohort of participants (N=51). We found that the degree of interhemispheric rs-FC within fronto-temporal auditory networks predicts—weeks after scanning—learning, transmission, and structural modification of an artificial tone system. Our study introduces neuroimaging in cultural transmission research and points to specific neural auditory processing mechanisms that constrain and drive variation in the cultural transmission and regularization of musical systems.
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Affiliation(s)
- Massimo Lumaca
- Center for Music in the Brain, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University and The Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus, Denmark
| | - Boris Kleber
- Center for Music in the Brain, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University and The Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus, Denmark
| | - Elvira Brattico
- Center for Music in the Brain, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University and The Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus, Denmark
| | - Peter Vuust
- Center for Music in the Brain, Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University and The Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus, Denmark
| | - Giosue Baggio
- Language Acquisition and Language Processing Lab, Department of Language and Literature, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
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