IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pcbi00/1009358.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Envelope reconstruction of speech and music highlights stronger tracking of speech at low frequencies

Author

Listed:
  • Nathaniel J Zuk
  • Jeremy W Murphy
  • Richard B Reilly
  • Edmund C Lalor

Abstract

The human brain tracks amplitude fluctuations of both speech and music, which reflects acoustic processing in addition to the encoding of higher-order features and one’s cognitive state. Comparing neural tracking of speech and music envelopes can elucidate stimulus-general mechanisms, but direct comparisons are confounded by differences in their envelope spectra. Here, we use a novel method of frequency-constrained reconstruction of stimulus envelopes using EEG recorded during passive listening. We expected to see music reconstruction match speech in a narrow range of frequencies, but instead we found that speech was reconstructed better than music for all frequencies we examined. Additionally, models trained on all stimulus types performed as well or better than the stimulus-specific models at higher modulation frequencies, suggesting a common neural mechanism for tracking speech and music. However, speech envelope tracking at low frequencies, below 1 Hz, was associated with increased weighting over parietal channels, which was not present for the other stimuli. Our results highlight the importance of low-frequency speech tracking and suggest an origin from speech-specific processing in the brain.Author summary: The time-varying amplitude of sounds such as speech and music provides information about phrasing and rhythm, and previous research has shown that the brain continuously tracks these variations. Is a common neural mechanism responsible for tracking both sounds? We used a technique that reconstructs these amplitude fluctuations from the fluctuations in recorded EEG to quantify the strength of neural tracking. Our hypothesis was that neural tracking for music would match speech in a narrow frequency range associated with syllables and musical beats. Though our results did suggest a common mechanism involved in tracking both speech and music at these higher frequencies, we instead found that speech was tracked better than the rock, orchestral, and vocals stimuli at all of the frequencies we examined. Moreover, low-frequency fluctuations at the rate of phrases were associated with increased EEG weightings over parietal scalp, which did not appear during the neural tracking of music. These results suggest that, unlike syllable- and beat-tracking, phrase-level tracking of amplitude variations in speech may be speech-specific.

Suggested Citation

  • Nathaniel J Zuk & Jeremy W Murphy & Richard B Reilly & Edmund C Lalor, 2021. "Envelope reconstruction of speech and music highlights stronger tracking of speech at low frequencies," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(9), pages 1-32, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pcbi00:1009358
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009358
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009358
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009358&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009358?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. Nima Mesgarani & Edward F. Chang, 2012. "Selective cortical representation of attended speaker in multi-talker speech perception," Nature, Nature, vol. 485(7397), pages 233-236, May.
    2. Sam V Norman-Haignere & Josh H McDermott, 2018. "Neural responses to natural and model-matched stimuli reveal distinct computations in primary and nonprimary auditory cortex," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(12), pages 1-46, December.
    3. Alexander J. E. Kell & Josh H. McDermott, 2019. "Invariance to background noise as a signature of non-primary auditory cortex," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 10(1), pages 1-11, 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. Brian R. W. Baucom & Panayiotis Georgiou & Craig J. Bryan & Eric L. Garland & Feea Leifker & Alexis May & Alexander Wong & Shrikanth S. Narayanan, 2017. "The Promise and the Challenge of Technology-Facilitated Methods for Assessing Behavioral and Cognitive Markers of Risk for Suicide among U.S. Army National Guard Personnel," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-18, March.
    2. Giovanni M. Di Liberto & Adam Attaheri & Giorgia Cantisani & Richard B. Reilly & Áine Ní Choisdealbha & Sinead Rocha & Perrine Brusini & Usha Goswami, 2023. "Emergence of the cortical encoding of phonetic features in the first year of life," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-11, December.
    3. Takuya Isomura & Kiyoshi Kotani & Yasuhiko Jimbo & Karl J. Friston, 2023. "Experimental validation of the free-energy principle with in vitro neural networks," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-15, December.
    4. Sahar Akram & Bernhard Englitz & Mounya Elhilali & Jonathan Z Simon & Shihab A Shamma, 2014. "Investigating the Neural Correlates of a Streaming Percept in an Informational-Masking Paradigm," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(12), pages 1-23, December.

    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:plo:pcbi00:1009358. 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: ploscompbiol (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/ .

    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.