Neural Bases of Speech Perception in Human Auditory Cortex

语言感知是我们最重要的能力之一——我们有一种天生的能力，但在儿童时期却要花很多年才能获得——这对我们的社会交往来说是最重要的。它也是最常受到中风和听力损失影响的能力之一。语音感知具有相当大的灵活性和鲁棒性——我们可以在嘈杂的环境中理解说话人，我们可以应对说话人的性别、口音或情绪的变化，所有这些都会影响我们需要解码的语音信号的性质。因此，更好地理解语言感知的神经基础对临床问题，如失语症中风的康复，以及教育神经科学有影响，因为这些研究将与第二语言学习和多语言儿童的发展有关。在美国国家科学基金会（National Science Foundation）的支持下，约瑟夫·劳斯切克（Josef Rauschecker）博士寻求答案，以理解语言感知的神经基础。他的研究将有助于将从动物听觉感知模型中获得的知识转移到对人类言语和语言感知的高级认知过程的理解上。层次网络、处理流和高阶计算图的概念已经成功地应用于动物复杂视觉和听觉感知的研究。Rauschecker博士将直接在人类身上进行类似的研究，使用无创、高分辨率的功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）来确定语音和类语音对听觉皮层的激活。利用高场功能磁共振成像，这些研究不仅将确定被自然和合成语音激活的皮层区域的位置，而不是具有类似复杂性的其他声音，而且还将首次揭示人类听觉和语言皮层中高阶声学-语音特征图的详细组织原则。这些研究将为人类高级听觉通路的研究领域提供丰富的新信息，并对皮层加工的一般组织原理和功能结构有深入的了解。这个项目更广泛的影响包括为认知神经科学的本科生和研究生提供实践研究经验的机会。这种对正在进行的研究的直接投入将导致教学和研究的更紧密结合。该资助项目将加强乔治城大学的研究基础设施，并为乔治城大学提供的两个正式培训项目做出贡献。该项目将努力进一步增加各级少数民族学生的人数。它将通过出版物和公共数据库向科学和非专业受众广泛传播结果，从而增强公众对科学的理解。

Speech perception is one of our most important abilities - something that we have an innate ability for but nevertheless spend many years acquiring as children- and that is of the utmostimportance for us in social interactions. It is also one of the abilities more commonly affected by strokes as well as by hearing loss. Speech perception is characterized by considerable flexibility and robustness - we can understand speakers in noisy environments, and we can cope withvariations in the speaker's gender, accent, or mood, all of which affect the nature of the speech signal we need to decode. A better understanding of the neural basis of speech perception, thus, impacts on clinical issues such as recovery from aphasic stroke, as well as on educational neuroscience, inasmuch as the studies will have relevance for second language learning and the development of multilingual children. With support from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Josef Rauschecker seeks answers to understand the neural basis of speech perception. His studies will help to transfer knowledge gained from animal models of auditory perception toward the understanding of higher cognitive processes of speech and language perception in humans. The notions of hierarchical networks, processing streams, and higher-order computational maps have been used successfully in animal research on complex visual and auditory perception. Dr. Rauschecker will perform analogous investigations directly in humans using noninvasive,high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to determine activation of auditory cortices by speech and speech-like sounds. Using high-field fMRI the studies will not only determine the location of cortical areas activated by natural and synthetic speech sounds, as opposed to other sounds with similar complexity, but also for the first time reveal detailedorganizational principles of higher-order acoustic-phonetic feature maps within human auditory and language cortex. The studies will provide a wealth of new information in the under-researched field of higher auditory pathways in humans, as well as insight into general organizational principles offunctional architecture in cortical processing.The broader impacts of this project include opportunities for hands-on research experience by undergraduate and graduate students in Cognitive Neuroscience. This direct immersion into ongoing research will lead to tighter integration of teaching and research. The funded project willenhance the infrastructure for research at Georgetown University and contribute to two formal training programs offered at GU. The project will strive to increase further the number of minority students at all levels. It will broadly disseminate results through publications and public databasesto scientific as well as lay audiences, thus, enhancing scientific understanding by the public.