Gastvortrag im Rahmen der Brain Language Talks

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Presenter: Olga Iljina, Universität Freiburg

Title: Investigations of spontaneous, real-world speech production using ECoG

Abstract:

Neurolinguistic research has largely relied on experimental paradigms, and it has mostly investigated brain activity in conditions of speech perception. Little, however, is currently known about the neuronal activity underlying natural, real-world speech. We are building up and evaluating a multimodal corpus of authentic, uninstructed, spontaneous speech data together with aligned electrocorticographic (ECoG) recordings to bridge this gap. These data have been obtained in epilepsy patients for pre-neurosurgical diagnostics from speech-relevant cortical areas. We have analyzed spatiotemporal patterns of brain activity underlying speech production and perception. Using a corpus-based approach, we have explored, among other parameters, the neuronal correlates of the focus accent, of word frequency, and of the semantic content of the sentence. Our analyses yield neuronal effects which are specific to parameters characterizing the linguistic material. We have also assessed the potential of such a linguistically-informed approach to map speech-relevant eloquent areas during pre-neurosurgical diagnostics, and found out that such data may indeed be helpful. This emergent line of corpus-based neurolinguistic research aims to generate novel evidence on how different properties of speech on various linguistic levels are represented in cortical activity during spontaneous communication and to provide input for neurosurgical diagnostics as well as brain-computer-interfaces for restoring speech from brain activity.

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