Li Jiawei, Hong Bo, Nolte Guido, Engel Andreas K, Zhang Dan
Department of Psychology, School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
Tsinghua Laboratory of Brain and Intelligence, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
Cereb Cortex. 2023 Nov 4;33(22):11080-11091. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhad347.
When we pay attention to someone, do we focus only on the sound they make, the word they use, or do we form a mental space shared with the speaker we want to pay attention to? Some would argue that the human language is no other than a simple signal, but others claim that human beings understand each other because they form a shared mental ground between the speaker and the listener. Our study aimed to explore the neural mechanisms of speech-selective attention by investigating the electroencephalogram-based neural coupling between the speaker and the listener in a cocktail party paradigm. The temporal response function method was employed to reveal how the listener was coupled to the speaker at the neural level. The results showed that the neural coupling between the listener and the attended speaker peaked 5 s before speech onset at the delta band over the left frontal region, and was correlated with speech comprehension performance. In contrast, the attentional processing of speech acoustics and semantics occurred primarily at a later stage after speech onset and was not significantly correlated with comprehension performance. These findings suggest a predictive mechanism to achieve speaker-listener neural coupling for successful speech comprehension.
当我们关注某个人时，我们是只专注于他们发出的声音、使用的词汇，还是会与我们想要关注的说话者形成一个共享的心理空间呢？有些人可能会认为人类语言不过是一种简单的信号，但另一些人则声称人类能够相互理解是因为他们在说话者和倾听者之间形成了一个共享的心理基础。我们的研究旨在通过在鸡尾酒会范式中研究基于脑电图的说话者和倾听者之间的神经耦合来探索言语选择性注意的神经机制。采用时间响应函数方法来揭示倾听者在神经层面上是如何与说话者耦合的。结果表明，倾听者与被关注的说话者之间的神经耦合在言语开始前5秒在左额叶区域的δ波段达到峰值，并且与言语理解表现相关。相比之下，对语音声学和语义的注意加工主要发生在言语开始后的较晚阶段，并且与理解表现没有显著相关性。这些发现提示了一种预测机制，以实现说话者 - 倾听者的神经耦合从而成功进行言语理解。
