Expertise with artificial nonspeech sounds recruits speech-sensitive cortical regions
Open accessAbstract
Regions of the human temporal lobe show greater activation for speech than for other sounds. These differences may reflect intrinsically specialized domain-specific adaptations for processing speech, or they may be driven by the significant expertise we have in listening to the speech signal. To test the expertise hypothesis, we used a video-game-based paradigm that tacitly trained listeners to categorize acoustically complex, artificial nonlinguistic sounds. Before and after training, we used functional MRI to measure how expertise with these sounds modulated temporal lobe activation. Participants' ability to explicitly categorize the nonspeech sounds predicted the change in pretraining to posttraining activation in speech-sensitive regions of the left posterior superior temporal sulcus, suggesting that emergent auditory expertise may help drive this functional regionalization. Thus, seemingly domain-specific patterns of neural activation in higher cortical regions may be driven in part by experience-based restructuring of high-dimensional perceptual space.
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The speech-selective response in the left posterior superior temporal cortex is related to the familiarity of auditory spectral patterns.
“the speech selective response in the left posterior superior temporal cortex was related to (a) the familiarity of auditory spectral patterns (Leech et al., 2009; Liebenthal et al., 2010; Margulis et al., 2009; Dick et al., 2011)”
From A review and synthesis of the first 20years of PET and fMRI studies of heard speech, spoken language and reading (2012) · cites this paper as Leech et al., 2009
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Specialization along the left superior temporal sulcus for auditory categorization
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- Authors
- Leech, R., Holt, L. L., Devlin, J. T., & Dick, F.
- Affiliations
- Hammersmith Hospital (GB)
- Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (US)
- University College London (GB)
- University of California San Diego (US)
- Venue
- The Journal of Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Society for Neuroscience
- Published
- 2009-04-22
- Volume
- 29
- Issue
- 16
- Pages
- 5234-5239
- ISSN
- 0270-6474 (ISSN-L)
- 1529-2401
- PMC
- PMC2747609
- OpenAlex
- W2133004258
- Cited by
- 83
- References
- 36
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 2 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 8 · 2014: 7 · 2013: 7 · 2012: 7
- FWCI
- 3.39
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- KiltHub Repository (submittedVersion)
- BIROn (Birkbeck, University of London) (submittedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- KiltHub Repository
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (0746067)
- Wellcome Trust
- Riksbankens Jubileumsfond
- National Institutes of Health
- Medical Research Council (G0400341)
- National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (R01DC004674)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neuroscience and Music Perception
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Phonetics and Phonology Research
- Keywords
- non-speech sounds, posterior superior temporal sulcus, temporal lobe activation, domain-specific adaptation, perceptual space, audiovisual speech perception, video game training
- MeSH terms
- Acoustic Stimulation, Adult, Cerebral Cortex, Female, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Sound, Speech, Speech Perception, Young Adult
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