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Neural Coding of Speech Sounds

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Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience

Synonyms

Cortical representation of speech sounds; Distributed speech processing; Neural processing of speech; Neural representation of speech sounds

Definition

Speech sounds are composed of both rapid spectrotemporal changes and slow steady-state portions. The neural coding of speech sounds involves the representation of precise action potential timing across many cortical areas. Behavioral speech sound discrimination accuracy is well predicted by quantifying the similarity between the spatiotemporal response patterns evoked by two sounds.

Detailed Description

Speech Sounds

Speech sounds, like all sounds, evoke patterns of activity in the auditory nerve that are transmitted to the central nervous system. The brain must accurately identify speech sounds despite large amounts of acoustic variability. For example, it is possible to perceive the word “dad” regardless of who is speaking (a male, female, or child), in various types of degradation (at a cocktail party or a concert), or at...

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Correspondence to Michael P. Kilgard .

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Kilgard, M.P., Engineer, C.T. (2015). Neural Coding of Speech Sounds. In: Jaeger, D., Jung, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6675-8_433

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