Krystyna Grabski

Functional MRI assessment of orofacial articulators: Neural correlates of lip, jaw, larynx, and tongue movements

Compared with complex coordinated orofacial actions, few neuroimaging studies have attempted to determine the shared and distinct neural substrates of supralaryngeal and laryngeal articulatory movements when performed independently. To determine cortical and subcortical regions associated with supralaryngeal motor control, participants produced lip, tongue and jaw movements while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). For laryngeal motor activity, participants produced the steady‐state/i/vowel. A sparse temporal sampling acquisition method was used to minimize movement‐related artifacts. Three main findings were observed. First, the four tasks activated a set of largely overlapping, common brain areas: the sensorimotor and premotor cortices, the right inferior frontal gyrus, the supplementary motor area, the left parietal operculum and the adjacent inferior parietal lobule, the basal ganglia and the cerebellum. Second, differences between tasks were restricted to the bilateral auditory cortices and to the left ventrolateral sensorimotor cortex, with greater signal intensity for vowel vocalization. Finally, a dorso‐ventral somatotopic organization of lip, jaw, vocalic/laryngeal, and tongue movements was observed within the primary motor and somatosensory cortices using individual region‐of‐interest (ROI) analyses. These results provide evidence for a core neural network involved in laryngeal and supralaryngeal motor control and further refine the sensorimotor somatotopic organization of orofacial articulators. Hum Brain Mapp 33:2306–2321, 2012.

Articulatory bias in speech categorization: Evidence from use-induced motor plasticity

Challenging the classical proposal of separate neural/cognitive processes for speech perception and speech production, several neurobiological and psycholinguistic models of speech perception argue for a functional connection between sensory and motor systems (e.g., Liberman and Whalen, 2000; Wilson and Iacoboni, 2006; Skipper et al., 2007; Schwartz et al., in press). In these models, phonetic interpretation of sensory information is determined or constrained by some internal motor simulation based on articulatory procedural knowledge. However, despite accumulating evidence that speech motor regions are activated in processing speech sounds (e.g., Fadiga et al., 2002; Pulvermuller et al., 2006; Sato et al., 2010), the question of whether articulatory processes mediate speech perception is still vigorously debated (e.g., Lotto et al., 2009; Sato et al., 2009; Scott et al., 2009). Using a new technique based on use-induced motor plasticity, we here provide evidence that the motor system can bias perceptual performance in auditory speech recognition and plays a mediating role in phonetic decision/categorization process.

A mediating role of the auditory dorsal pathway in selective adaptation to speech: a state-dependent transcranial magnetic stimulation study.

In addition to sensory processing, recent neurobiological models of speech perception postulate the existence of a left auditory dorsal processing stream, linking auditory speech representations in the auditory cortex with articulatory representations in the motor system, through sensorimotor interaction interfaced in the supramarginal gyrus and/or the posterior part of the superior temporal gyrus. The present state-dependent transcranial magnetic stimulation study is aimed at determining whether speech recognition is indeed mediated by the auditory dorsal pathway, by examining the causal contribution of the left ventral premotor cortex, supramarginal gyrus and posterior part of the superior temporal gyrus during an auditory syllable identification/categorization task. To this aim, participants listened to a sequence of /ba/ syllables before undergoing a two forced-choice auditory syllable decision task on ambiguous syllables (ranging in the categorical boundary between /ba/ and /da/). Consistent with previous studies on selective adaptation to speech, following adaptation to /ba/, participants responses were biased towards /da/. In contrast, in a control condition without prior auditory adaptation no such bias was observed. Crucially, compared to the results observed without stimulation, single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation delivered at the onset of each target stimulus interacted with the initial state of each of the stimulated brain area by enhancing the adaptation effect. These results demonstrate that the auditory dorsal pathway contribute to auditory speech adaptation.

Shared and distinct neural correlates of vowel perception and production

Recent neurobiological models postulate that sensorimotor interactions play a key role in speech perception and speech motor control, especially under adverse listening conditions or in case of complex articulatory speech sequences. The present fMRI study aimed to investigate whether isolated vowel perception and production might also induce sensorimotor activity, independently of syllable sequencing and coarticulation mechanisms and using a sparse acquisition technique in order to limit influence of scanner noise. To this aim, participants first passively listened to French vowels previously recorded from their own voice. In a subsequent production task, done within the same imaging session and using the same acquisition parameters, participants were asked to overtly produce the same vowels. Our results demonstrate that a left postero-dorsal stream, linking auditory speech percepts with articulatory representations and including the posterior inferior frontal gyrus, the adjacent ventral premotor cortex and the temporoparietal junction, is an influential part of both vowel perception and production. Specific analyses on phonetic features further confirmed the involvement of the left postero-dorsal stream in vowel processing and motor control. Altogether, these results suggest that vowel representations are largely distributed over sensorimotor brain areas and provide further evidence for a functional coupling between speech perception and production systems.

Converging toward a common speech code: imitative and perceptuo-motor recalibration processes in speech production

Auditory and somatosensory systems play a key role in speech motor control. In the act of speaking, segmental speech movements are programmed to reach phonemic sensory goals, which in turn are used to estimate actual sensory feedback in order to further control production. The adults tendency to automatically imitate a number of acoustic-phonetic characteristics in another speakers speech however suggests that speech production not only relies on the intended phonemic sensory goals and actual sensory feedback but also on the processing of external speech inputs. These online adaptive changes in speech production, or phonetic convergence effects, are thought to facilitate conversational exchange by contributing to setting a common perceptuo-motor ground between the speaker and the listener. In line with previous studies on phonetic convergence, we here demonstrate, in a non-interactive situation of communication, online unintentional and voluntary imitative changes in relevant acoustic features of acoustic vowel targets (fundamental and first formant frequencies) during speech production and imitation. In addition, perceptuo-motor recalibration processes, or after-effects, occurred not only after vowel production and imitation but also after auditory categorization of the acoustic vowel targets. Altogether, these findings demonstrate adaptive plasticity of phonemic sensory-motor goals and suggest that, apart from sensory-motor knowledge, speech production continuously draws on perceptual learning from the external speech environment.

Somatosensory-Motor Adaptation of Orofacial Actions in Posterior Parietal and Ventral Premotor Cortices

Recent studies have provided evidence for sensory-motor adaptive changes and action goal coding of visually guided manual action in premotor and posterior parietal cortices. To extend these results to orofacial actions, devoid of auditory and visual feedback, we used a repetition suppression paradigm while measuring neural activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging during repeated intransitive and silent lip, jaw and tongue movements. In the motor domain, this paradigm refers to decreased activity in specific neural populations due to repeated motor acts and has been proposed to reflect sensory-motor adaptation. Orofacial movements activated a set of largely overlapping, common brain areas forming a core neural network classically involved in orofacial motor control. Crucially, suppressed neural responses during repeated orofacial actions were specifically observed in the left ventral premotor cortex, the intraparietal sulcus, the inferior parietal lobule and the superior parietal lobule. Since no visual and auditory feedback were provided during orofacial actions, these results suggest somatosensory-motor adaptive control of intransitive and silent orofacial actions in these premotor and parietal regions.

Adaptive coding of orofacial and speech actions in motor and somatosensory spaces with and without overt motor behavior

Studies of speech motor control suggest that articulatory and phonemic goals are defined in multidimensional motor, somatosensory, and auditory spaces. To test whether motor simulation might rely on sensory–motor coding common with those for motor execution, we used a repetition suppression (RS) paradigm while measuring neural activity with sparse sampling fMRI during repeated overt and covert orofacial and speech actions. RS refers to the phenomenon that repeated stimuli or motor acts lead to decreased activity in specific neural populations and are associated with enhanced adaptive learning related to the repeated stimulus attributes. Common suppressed neural responses were observed in motor and posterior parietal regions in the achievement of both repeated overt and covert orofacial and speech actions, including the left premotor cortex and inferior frontal gyrus, the superior parietal cortex and adjacent intraprietal sulcus, and the left IC and the SMA. Interestingly, reduced activity of the auditory cortex was observed during overt but not covert speech production, a finding likely reflecting a motor rather an auditory imagery strategy by the participants. By providing evidence for adaptive changes in premotor and associative somatosensory brain areas, the observed RS suggests online state coding of both orofacial and speech actions in somatosensory and motor spaces with and without motor behavior and sensory feedback.