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Spatiotemporal differentiation in auditory and motor regions during auditory phoneme discrimination

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Abstract

Auditory phoneme discrimination (APD) is supported by both auditory and motor regions through a sensorimotor interface embedded in a fronto-temporo-parietal cortical network. However, the specific spatiotemporal organization of this network during APD with respect to different types of phonemic contrasts is still unclear. Here, we use source reconstruction, applied to event-related potentials in a group of 47 participants, to uncover a potential spatiotemporal differentiation in these brain regions during a passive and active APD task with respect to place of articulation (PoA), voicing and manner of articulation (MoA). Results demonstrate that in an early stage (50–110 ms), auditory, motor and sensorimotor regions elicit more activation during the passive and active APD task with MoA and active APD task with voicing compared to PoA. In a later stage (130–175 ms), the same auditory and motor regions elicit more activation during the APD task with PoA compared to MoA and voicing, yet only in the active condition, implying important timing differences. Degree of attention influences a frontal network during the APD task with PoA, whereas auditory regions are more affected during the APD task with MoA and voicing. Based on these findings, it can be carefully suggested that APD is supported by the integration of early activation of auditory-acoustic properties in superior temporal regions, more perpetuated for MoA and voicing, and later auditory-to-motor integration in sensorimotor areas, more perpetuated for PoA.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Internal Medicine, Ghent University, De Pintelaan 185, 9000, Ghent, Belgium

    Annelies Aerts & Patrick Santens

  2. Department of Neurology, Ghent University Hospital, Ghent, Belgium

    Annelies Aerts, Patrick Santens & Miet De Letter

  3. Department of Electronics and Information Systems, Medical Image and Signal Processing Group, Ghent University-IMinds, Ghent, Belgium

    Gregor Strobbe & Pieter van Mierlo

  4. Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Robert J. Hartsuiker

  5. Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Paul Corthals & Miet De Letter

  6. Department of Education, Health and Social Work, University College Ghent, Ghent, Belgium

    Paul Corthals

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  1. Annelies Aerts
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  2. Gregor Strobbe
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Correspondence to Annelies Aerts.

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This project has been financed with the aid of an Aspirant Fellowship Granted to the first author by the Fund for Scientific Research—Flanders (Grant Number 1.1.344.11). All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Aerts, A., Strobbe, G., van Mierlo, P. et al. Spatiotemporal differentiation in auditory and motor regions during auditory phoneme discrimination. Acta Neurol Belg 117, 477–491 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13760-017-0761-3

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