Latent neural dynamics encode temporal context in speech
- PMID: 37441880
- PMCID: PMC11182421
- DOI: 10.1016/j.heares.2023.108838
Latent neural dynamics encode temporal context in speech
Abstract
Direct neural recordings from human auditory cortex have demonstrated encoding for acoustic-phonetic features of consonants and vowels. Neural responses also encode distinct acoustic amplitude cues related to timing, such as those that occur at the onset of a sentence after a silent period or the onset of the vowel in each syllable. Here, we used a group reduced rank regression model to show that distributed cortical responses support a low-dimensional latent state representation of temporal context in speech. The timing cues each capture more unique variance than all other phonetic features and exhibit rotational or cyclical dynamics in latent space from activity that is widespread over the superior temporal gyrus. We propose that these spatially distributed timing signals could serve to provide temporal context for, and possibly bind across time, the concurrent processing of individual phonetic features, to compose higher-order phonological (e.g. word-level) representations.
Keywords: Auditory; Electrocorticography; Latent state; Reduced-rank regression; Superior temporal gyrus.
Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Conflict of interest statement
Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare no competing interests.
Figures





Similar articles
-
The Encoding of Speech Sounds in the Superior Temporal Gyrus.Neuron. 2019 Jun 19;102(6):1096-1110. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2019.04.023. Neuron. 2019. PMID: 31220442 Free PMC article. Review.
-
Neural Tuning to Low-Level Features of Speech throughout the Perisylvian Cortex.J Neurosci. 2017 Aug 16;37(33):7906-7920. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0238-17.2017. Epub 2017 Jul 17. J Neurosci. 2017. PMID: 28716965 Free PMC article.
-
Phonetic feature encoding in human superior temporal gyrus.Science. 2014 Feb 28;343(6174):1006-10. doi: 10.1126/science.1245994. Epub 2014 Jan 30. Science. 2014. PMID: 24482117 Free PMC article.
-
A Spatial Map of Onset and Sustained Responses to Speech in the Human Superior Temporal Gyrus.Curr Biol. 2018 Jun 18;28(12):1860-1871.e4. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2018.04.033. Epub 2018 May 31. Curr Biol. 2018. PMID: 29861132
-
Speech Computations of the Human Superior Temporal Gyrus.Annu Rev Psychol. 2022 Jan 4;73:79-102. doi: 10.1146/annurev-psych-022321-035256. Epub 2021 Oct 21. Annu Rev Psychol. 2022. PMID: 34672685 Free PMC article. Review.
Cited by
-
Dissecting neural computations in the human auditory pathway using deep neural networks for speech.Nat Neurosci. 2023 Dec;26(12):2213-2225. doi: 10.1038/s41593-023-01468-4. Epub 2023 Oct 30. Nat Neurosci. 2023. PMID: 37904043 Free PMC article.
-
Time Is of the Essence: Neural Codes, Synchronies, Oscillations, Architectures.Front Comput Neurosci. 2022 Jun 15;16:898829. doi: 10.3389/fncom.2022.898829. eCollection 2022. Front Comput Neurosci. 2022. PMID: 35814343 Free PMC article.
-
Historical loss weakens competitive behavior by remodeling ventral hippocampal dynamics.Cell Discov. 2025 Feb 25;11(1):16. doi: 10.1038/s41421-024-00751-3. Cell Discov. 2025. PMID: 39994206 Free PMC article.
References
-
- Antin B, Shenoy K, Linderman S, 2021. Probabilistic jPCA: a constrained model of neural dynamics, in: Cosyne Abstracts 2021. Presented at the Cosyne21, Online.
-
- Austern M and Zhou W, 2020. Asymptotics of cross-validation. arXiv preprint arXiv:2001.11111.