IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v15y2024i1d10.1038_s41467-024-48126-2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Eye movements track prioritized auditory features in selective attention to natural speech

Author

Listed:
  • Quirin Gehmacher

    (Department of Psychology, Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience)

  • Juliane Schubert

    (Department of Psychology, Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience)

  • Fabian Schmidt

    (Department of Psychology, Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience)

  • Thomas Hartmann

    (Department of Psychology, Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience)

  • Patrick Reisinger

    (Department of Psychology, Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience)

  • Sebastian Rösch

    (Head and Neck Surgery, Paracelsus Medical University Salzburg)

  • Konrad Schwarz

    (MED-EL GmbH)

  • Tzvetan Popov

    (Department of Psychology, University of Zurich
    University of Konstanz)

  • Maria Chait

    (University College London)

  • Nathan Weisz

    (Department of Psychology, Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience
    Christian Doppler University Hospital, Paracelsus Medical University)

Abstract

Over the last decades, cognitive neuroscience has identified a distributed set of brain regions that are critical for attention. Strong anatomical overlap with brain regions critical for oculomotor processes suggests a joint network for attention and eye movements. However, the role of this shared network in complex, naturalistic environments remains understudied. Here, we investigated eye movements in relation to (un)attended sentences of natural speech. Combining simultaneously recorded eye tracking and magnetoencephalographic data with temporal response functions, we show that gaze tracks attended speech, a phenomenon we termed ocular speech tracking. Ocular speech tracking even differentiates a target from a distractor in a multi-speaker context and is further related to intelligibility. Moreover, we provide evidence for its contribution to neural differences in speech processing, emphasizing the necessity to consider oculomotor activity in future research and in the interpretation of neural differences in auditory cognition.

Suggested Citation

  • Quirin Gehmacher & Juliane Schubert & Fabian Schmidt & Thomas Hartmann & Patrick Reisinger & Sebastian Rösch & Konrad Schwarz & Tzvetan Popov & Maria Chait & Nathan Weisz, 2024. "Eye movements track prioritized auditory features in selective attention to natural speech," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-15, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:15:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-024-48126-2
    DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-48126-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48126-2
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41467-024-48126-2?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daniel E. Winkowski & Eric I. Knudsen, 2006. "Top-down gain control of the auditory space map by gaze control circuitry in the barn owl," Nature, Nature, vol. 439(7074), pages 336-339, January.
    2. G. N. Wilkinson & C. E. Rogers, 1973. "Symbolic Description of Factorial Models for Analysis of Variance," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series C, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 22(3), pages 392-399, November.
    3. Sarah Tune & Mohsen Alavash & Lorenz Fiedler & Jonas Obleser, 2021. "Publisher Correction: Neural attentional-filter mechanisms of listening success in middle-aged and older individuals," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-1, December.
    4. Baiwei Liu & Anna C. Nobre & Freek van Ede, 2022. "Functional but not obligatory link between microsaccades and neural modulation by covert spatial attention," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-10, December.
    5. Peiqing Jin & Jiajie Zou & Tao Zhou & Nai Ding, 2018. "Eye activity tracks task-relevant structures during speech and auditory sequence perception," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 9(1), pages 1-15, December.
    6. Benjamin Gagl & Klara Gregorova & Julius Golch & Stefan Hawelka & Jona Sassenhagen & Alessandro Tavano & David Poeppel & Christian J. Fiebach, 2022. "Eye movements during text reading align with the rate of speech production," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 6(3), pages 429-442, March.
    7. Sarah Tune & Mohsen Alavash & Lorenz Fiedler & Jonas Obleser, 2021. "Neural attentional-filter mechanisms of listening success in middle-aged and older individuals," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 12(1), pages 1-14, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Payne, Roger W., 1998. "Design keys, pseudo-factors and general balance," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 217-229, December.
    2. repec:jss:jstsof:34:i01 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Christian Kleiber & Achim Zeileis, 2005. "Validating multiple structural change models-a case study," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(5), pages 685-690.
    4. Cheng Ly & Brent Doiron, 2009. "Divisive Gain Modulation with Dynamic Stimuli in Integrate-and-Fire Neurons," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(4), pages 1-12, April.
    5. Zeileis, Achim & Kleiber, Christian & Kramer, Walter & Hornik, Kurt, 2003. "Testing and dating of structural changes in practice," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 44(1-2), pages 109-123, October.
    6. Juan Linde-Domingo & Bernhard Spitzer, 2024. "Geometry of visuospatial working memory information in miniature gaze patterns," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 8(2), pages 336-348, February.
    7. Großmann, Heiko, 2014. "Automating the analysis of variance of orthogonal designs," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 1-18.
    8. Rotem Botvinik-Nezer & Bogdan Petre & Marta Ceko & Martin A. Lindquist & Naomi P. Friedman & Tor D. Wager, 2024. "Placebo treatment affects brain systems related to affective and cognitive processes, but not nociceptive pain," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-20, December.
    9. Kevser Cetin & Wolfram Mauser, 2023. "The Role of Recent Climate Change in Explaining the Statistical Yield Increase of Maize in Northern Bavaria—A Model Study," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 13(7), pages 1-19, July.
    10. Zardetto Diego, 2015. "ReGenesees: an Advanced R System for Calibration, Estimation and Sampling Error Assessment in Complex Sample Surveys," Journal of Official Statistics, Sciendo, vol. 31(2), pages 177-203, June.
    11. Cansino, José M. & Dugo, Víctor & Gálvez-Ruiz, David & Román-Collado, Rocío, 2023. "What drove electricity consumption in the residential sector during the SARS-CoV-2 confinement? A special focus on university students in southern Spain," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 262(PB).
    12. Artur Araujo & Steven Julious & Stephen Senn, 2016. "Understanding Variation in Sets of N-of-1 Trials," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(12), pages 1-24, December.
    13. Bent Nielsen, 2014. "Deviance analysis of age-period-cohort models," Economics Papers 2014-W03, Economics Group, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.
    14. Riehl, Kevin & Kiesel, Florian & Schiereck, Dirk, 2022. "Political and Socioeconomic Factors That Determine the Financial Outcome of Successful Green Innovation," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 132099, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    15. repec:jss:jstsof:23:i07 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Wei Pan & Xianbin Wang & Wenwei Zhou & Bowen Hang & Liwen Guo, 2023. "Linguistic Analysis for Identifying Depression and Subsequent Suicidal Ideation on Weibo: Machine Learning Approaches," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(3), pages 1-12, February.
    17. Ferran Orga & Andrew Mitchell & Marc Freixes & Francesco Aletta & Rosa Ma Alsina-Pagès & Maria Foraster, 2021. "Multilevel Annoyance Modelling of Short Environmental Sound Recordings," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(11), pages 1-13, May.
    18. repec:jss:jstsof:14:i09 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Emil Exenberger & Michaela Kav?áková, 2020. "Evaluation of financial health of companies through data envelopment analysis: Selection of variables for the DEA model in R," Proceedings of Economics and Finance Conferences 10913067, International Institute of Social and Economic Sciences.
    20. Emi Tanaka, 2020. "Simple outlier detection for a multi‐environmental field trial," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 76(4), pages 1374-1382, December.
    21. repec:jss:jstsof:17:i04 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Jesper Ryden & Sven Erick Alm, 2010. "The effect of interaction and rounding error in two-way ANOVA: example of impact on testing for normality," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(10), pages 1695-1701.
    23. Nitzan Shahar & Tobias U Hauser & Michael Moutoussis & Rani Moran & Mehdi Keramati & NSPN consortium & Raymond J Dolan, 2019. "Improving the reliability of model-based decision-making estimates in the two-stage decision task with reaction-times and drift-diffusion modeling," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(2), pages 1-25, February.
    24. Jamie Cummins & Jan De Houwer, 2019. "An inkblot for beliefs: The Truth Misattribution Procedure," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(6), pages 1-21, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:15:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-024-48126-2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.