Scott Sophie K, Rosen Stuart, Lang Harriet, Wise Richard J S
Department of Psychology, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2006 Aug;120(2):1075-83. doi: 10.1121/1.2216725.
Functional imaging studies of speech perception in the human brain have identified a key role for auditory association areas in the temporal lobes (bilateral superior temporal gyri and sulci) in the perceptual processing of the speech signal. This is extended to suggest some functional specialization within this bilateral system, with a particular role for the left anterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) in processing intelligible speech. In the current study, noise-vocoded speech was used to vary the intelligibility of speech parametrically. This replicated the finding of a selective response to intelligibility in speech in the left anterior superior temporal sulcus, in contrast to the posterior superior temporal sulcus, which showed a response profile insensitive to the degree of intelligibility. These results are related to theories of functional organization in the human auditory system, which have indicated that there are separate processing streams, with different functional roles, running anterior and posterior to primary auditory cortex. Specifically, it is suggested that an anterior stream processing intelligibility can be distinguished from a posterior stream associated with transient representations, important in spoken repetition and working memory.
对人类大脑言语感知的功能成像研究已经确定，颞叶（双侧颞上回和颞上沟）中的听觉联合区域在言语信号的感知处理中起关键作用。这进一步表明，在这个双侧系统内存在一些功能特化，其中左前颞上沟（STS）在处理可理解言语方面具有特殊作用。在当前研究中，使用噪声编码语音来参数化地改变言语的可理解性。这重现了左前颞上沟对言语可理解性的选择性反应这一发现，与之形成对比的是，后颞上沟的反应模式对可理解程度不敏感。这些结果与人类听觉系统功能组织的理论相关，该理论表明，在初级听觉皮层的前后存在不同功能作用的独立处理流。具体而言，有人提出，处理可理解性的前向流可以与与瞬时表征相关的后向流区分开来，瞬时表征在言语复述和工作记忆中很重要。
