Neuroimaging studies of audiovocal integration

用语言表达复杂思想和情感的能力是人类独有的。同样，人们普遍认为人类的声音是第一种乐器。说话和唱歌所需要的核心技能是发音器官（喉、舌、颚和嘴唇）的精确协调。临床和实验证据表明，听到自己的声音对声音控制很重要。例如，那些在学会说话后失去听力的人，他们的讲话质量会逐渐下降。听力损失后不久就会出现与强度、音高控制和语速有关的问题。然而，只有在长时间的失聪之后，元音和辅音的发音才会出现问题。当听力受损的人在助听器或人工耳蜗植入等技术的帮助下能够再次听到自己的语言时，他们的语言质量通常会恢复正常。这一观察结果表明，某些方面的语言会立即受到耳聋的影响，而另一些方面则会在耳聋后相当长一段时间内保持不变，这表明语言产生的某些特征依赖于听觉反馈，而另一些特征则依赖于一种神经表征，这种表征允许大脑预测特定声道运动会产生什么样的声音。我的研究项目的目标是了解大脑是如何形成和使用这些声音-运动关系的表征来说话的。为了揭示其中的神经机制，我将使用功能性磁共振成像和事件相关电位实验来推进我们对发声至关重要的感觉运动映射的基本理解。一些沟通障碍被认为与运动控制和感觉反馈机制的失败有关。理解支持语言的感觉运动表征将有助于开发这些形式的沟通障碍的治疗方法。此外，该研究可能有助于阐明听力障碍对儿童语言发育和成人可理解语言保存的影响，并与第二语言学习的研究相关。

The ability to communicate complex thoughts and emotions with speech is uniquely human. As well, it is commonly assumed that the human voice was the first musical instrument. The core skill required for both speaking and singing is the precise coordination of the vocal articulators (larynx, tongue, jaw, and lips). Clinical and experimental evidence indicates that hearing your own voice is important for vocal control. For example, people who lose their hearing after they have learned to talk show a gradual deterioration in the quality of their speech. Problems related to intensity, pitch control and speech rate are frequently seen soon after hearing loss. However, it is only after much longer periods of deafness that problems in vowel and consonant production appear. When hearing impaired individuals can again hear their own speech with the help of technologies such as hearing aids or cochlear implants, the quality of their speech typically returns to normal. This observation that some aspects of speech are immediately affected by deafness while others persist unaltered for a relatively long time after deafness onset shows that some features of speech production rely on auditory feedback, while others rely on a neural representation that allows the brain to predict what sound will result from a particular vocal tract movement. The goal of my research program is to understand how the brain forms and uses these representations of the acoustic-motor relationship for speech. To uncover the neural mechanisms involved, I will use functional magnetic resonance imaging and event-related potential experiments to advance our basic understanding of the sensorimotor mappings that are critical to vocalization. Several communication disorders are thought to be linked to a failure in the mechanisms that relate motor control and sensory feedback. Understanding the sensorimotor representations supporting speech will aid the development of treatments for these forms of communication disorders. In addition, the research may help clarify the impact of hearing impairments on the development of speech in children and the preservation of intelligible speech in adults, as well as be relevant to research on second-language learning.