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The Journal of Neuroscience, February 11, 2009, 29(6):1699-1706; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3694-08.2009

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Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Dynamic and Task-Dependent Encoding of Speech and Voice by Phase Reorganization of Cortical Oscillations

Milene Bonte, Giancarlo Valente, and Elia Formisano

Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands

Correspondence should be addressed to Milene Bonte, Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Maastricht, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands. Email: m.bonte{at}psychology.unimaas.nl

Speech and vocal sounds are at the core of human communication. Cortical processing of these sounds critically depends on behavioral demands. However, the neurocomputational mechanisms enabling this adaptive processing remain elusive. Here we examine the task-dependent reorganization of electroencephalographic responses to natural speech sounds (vowels /a/, /i/, /u/) spoken by three speakers (two female, one male) while listeners perform a one-back task on either vowel or speaker identity. We show that dynamic changes of sound-evoked responses and phase patterns of cortical oscillations in the alpha band (8–12 Hz) closely reflect the abstraction and analysis of the sounds along the task-relevant dimension. Vowel categorization leads to a significant temporal realignment of responses to the same vowel, e.g., /a/, independent of who pronounced this vowel, whereas speaker categorization leads to a significant temporal realignment of responses to the same speaker, e.g., speaker 1, independent of which vowel she/he pronounced. This transient and goal-dependent realignment of neuronal responses to physically different external events provides a robust cortical coding mechanism for forming and processing abstract representations of auditory (speech) input.

Key words: auditory cortex; EEG; alpha; synchrony; language; speech

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Received Aug. 5, 2008; revised Jan. 5, 2009; accepted Jan. 7, 2009.

Correspondence should be addressed to Milene Bonte, Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Maastricht, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands. Email: m.bonte{at}psychology.unimaas.nl

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