CAREER: Uncovering the neural dynamics of speech monitoring processes during language production

职业：揭示语言生成过程中语音监控过程的神经动力学

• 批准号: 2143805
• 负责人: Stephanie Ries-Cornou
• 金额: $ 66.31万
• 依托单位: San Diego State University Foundation
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-08-01 至 2027-07-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2143805&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Uncovering; neural; dynamics; speech

Language is one of the distinctive cognitive faculties that is unique to humans. We often take our fluency in speech production for granted. Remarkably, although adult, native-language speakers can produce 2 to 3 words per second as they speak, they only make speech errors about once every thousand words! Speech monitoring is the mechanism by which we control our speech production so efficiently to avoid or correct errors as we are speaking. Importantly, we are able to monitor our speech both before and after we have heard ourselves speak, but how our brain supports speech monitoring is still unclear and is the focus of this study. The researchers will challenge speakers with tongue-twisters and other speech tasks and use a powerful technique to study brain activity during task performance. They will investigate which parts of our brain allow us to monitor our speech production before versus after we hear ourselves speak. They will also examine how these brain regions interact with one another. The results of this research will help us understand how humans monitor their speech production in real time and will be relevant to understanding how and why speech monitoring function can become impaired in speech disorders such as aphasia. These studies may also lead to insights as to how speech impairment can be corrected. Researchers will develop an outreach program centered around lectures on language and the brain to bring these insights to a broad, general audience, and to provide educational opportunities especially to under-represented minorities from elementary school to graduate school. In this project, the combined excellent spatial and temporal resolution of intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG), a brain imaging technique, will be used to precisely identify which brain regions are involved at which stage of speech monitoring while we produce language. Specifically, researchers will use the high resolution of iEEG to investigate whether speech perception is independently engaged in monitoring our speech before we actually produce it, or whether instead, inner speech monitoring relies more on our speech production system in tandem with domain-general action monitoring. The results of this research will help resolve competing cognitive models of how we monitor speech production, and also will illuminate how the different brain regions involved in speech monitoring functionally interact in real time before versus after speech output. Because iEEG is an invasive brain imaging technique that is used for clinical monitoring purposes in patients with epilepsy (to localize epileptic foci for surgical removal), it is also necessary to establish whether the behavioral results found in the patients who have volunteered for this study, fall within the normal range. Therefore, researchers will in parallel collect behavioral data online in control participants in order to compare the performance of patients with epilepsy to that of normal, matched controls. Overall, this research will be transformative and will have tremendous impact in neuroscience, cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics and provide deeper understanding of the impressive monitoring and error-correcting mechanisms in our brains that enable us to speak clearly.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

语言是人类独有的独特认知能力之一。我们经常认为自己流利的演讲能力是理所当然的。值得注意的是，尽管以英语为母语的成年人在说话时每秒能说出2到3个单词，但他们大约每1000个单词才会犯一次错误！语音监控是一种机制，我们通过它来有效地控制我们的语音产出，以避免或纠正我们说话时的错误。重要的是，我们能够在听到自己说话之前和之后监控我们的语音，但我们的大脑如何支持语音监控仍然不清楚，这也是这项研究的重点。研究人员将用绕口令和其他语音任务来挑战说话者，并使用一种强大的技术来研究任务执行过程中的大脑活动。他们将研究我们大脑的哪些部分允许我们在听到自己说话之前或之后监控我们的言语产生。他们还将研究这些大脑区域是如何相互作用的。这项研究的结果将有助于我们了解人类如何实时监测他们的言语产生，并将与理解失语症等言语障碍的言语监测功能如何以及为什么会受损有关。这些研究还可能导致对如何纠正言语障碍的洞察。研究人员将开发一个以语言和大脑讲座为中心的推广计划，将这些见解带给广泛的普通观众，并提供教育机会，特别是为从小学到研究生的代表不足的少数族裔。在这个项目中，脑成像技术颅内脑电(IEEG)结合了优异的空间和时间分辨率，将被用来在我们产生语言的同时，准确地识别在语音监测的哪个阶段涉及哪些大脑区域。具体地说，研究人员将使用iEEG的高分辨率来调查言语知觉是否在我们实际产生言语之前独立地参与监督我们的言语，或者相反，内心的言语监督是否更多地依赖于我们的言语产生系统与领域一般动作监测相结合。这项研究的结果将有助于解决我们如何监控语音产生的相互竞争的认知模型，并将阐明参与语音监控的不同大脑区域在语音输出之前和之后如何实时进行功能交互。由于iEEG是一种侵入性脑成像技术，用于癫痫患者的临床监测(定位癫痫灶以进行手术切除)，因此也有必要确定在自愿参加这项研究的患者中发现的行为结果是否在正常范围内。因此，研究人员将同时在线收集对照参与者的行为数据，以比较癫痫患者和正常、匹配的对照组的表现。总体而言，这项研究将是变革性的，将在神经科学、认知心理学和心理语言学方面产生巨大影响，并提供对我们大脑中令人印象深刻的监控和纠错机制的更深入了解，使我们能够清晰地说话。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。