Dynamics of Functional Networks for Syllable and Word-Level Processing.

Speech comprehension requires the ability to temporally segment the acoustic input for higher-level linguistic analysis. Oscillation-based approaches suggest that low-frequency auditory cortex oscillations track syllable-sized acoustic information and therefore emphasize the relevance of syllabic-level acoustic processing for speech segmentation. How syllabic processing interacts with higher levels of speech processing, beyond segmentation, including the anatomical and neurophysiological characteristics of the networks involved, is debated.

Acoustically Driven Cortical δ Oscillations Underpin Prosodic Chunking.

Oscillation-based models of speech perception postulate a cortical computational principle by which decoding is performed within a window structure derived by a segmentation process. Segmentation of syllable-size chunks is realized by a θ oscillator. We provide evidence for an analogous role of a δ oscillator in the segmentation of phrase-sized chunks.

The possible role of brain rhythms in perceiving fast speech: Evidence from adult aging.

The rhythms of speech and the time scales of linguistic units (e.g., syllables) correspond remarkably to cortical oscillations.

Decoding time for the identification of musical key.

This study examines the decoding times at which the brain processes structural information in music and compares them to timescales implicated in recent work on speech. Combining an experimental paradigm based on Ghitza and Greenberg (Phonetica, 66(1-2), 113-126, 2009) for speech with the approach of Farbood et al. (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 39(4), 911-918, 2013) for musical key-finding, listeners were asked to judge the key of short melodic sequences that were presented at a highly a compressed rate with varying durations of silence inserted in a periodic manner in the audio signal.

Refining a model of hearing impairment using speech psychophysics.

The premise of this study is that models of hearing, in general, and of individual hearing impairment, in particular, can be improved by using speech test results as an integral part of the modeling process. A conceptual iterative procedure is presented which, for an individual, considers measures of sensitivity, cochlear compression, and phonetic confusions using the Diagnostic Rhyme Test (DRT) framework. The suggested approach is exemplified by presenting data from three hearing-impaired listeners and results obtained with models of the hearing impairment of the individuals.