# Feedback and Feedforward Mechanisms of Speech Perception

> **NIH NIH R21** · UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH AT PITTSBURGH · 2022 · $32,186

## Abstract

ABSTRACT / PROJECT SUMMARY
Speech communication plays a crucial role in conveying our thoughts to others, maintaining social ties, and
supporting educational achievement. As a result, communication disorders that impact speech perception like
autism, dyslexia, and hearing loss can be costly to both individuals and society. Understanding the neurobiological
bases of speech processing is an important goal that has been hastened by invasive intracranial electrophysiology
in neurosurgical contexts. Yet, substantial behavioral evidence demonstrates dynamic, flexible aspects of the
mapping of speech input to phonemes that is not yet accounted for in neurobiological models. This
Exploratory/Developmental R21 project pursues the central hypothesis that listening context systematically impacts
cortical response to speech and therefore affects the encoding of acoustic dimensions in signaling phonemes. A
newly established cross-disciplinary research team will use intracerebral recording via
stereoelectroencephalography (sEEG) obtained in a neurosurgical context to pursue this hypothesis. Like
electrocorticography (ECoG), sEEG offers high spatiotemporal resolution and can target the cortical surface,
including superior temporal gyrus (STG). Owing to the intracortical electrode placement, sEEG electrodes record
through the supratemporal plane, specifically targeting both deep sulcal and gyral grey matter including superior
temporal sulcus (STS) and Heschl’s gyrus (HG). Simultaneous scalp electroencephalography (EEG) will be
acquired to link these intracortical measures with noninvasive approaches appropriate in studies of healthy listeners.
Aim 1 will establish neural response to two acoustic-phonetic dimensions as a function of the perceptual weight with
which they signal phoneme identity. This will provide a baseline response for each participant for comparison as
experimental manipulations to listening context shift perceptual weights in Aim 2, and will establish how individual
differences in perceptual weighting strategies predict cortical electrophysiological response. Aim 2 will introduce two
well-established manipulations that, behaviorally, shift perceptual weights relative to baseline: introduction of noise
and introduction of an ‘accent’ for which the short-term speech input deviates from distributional regularities of the
native language. Examination of experimental manipulations within-participant will provide a sensitive means by
which to assay changes in neural response as a function of changes in perceptual weights arising across listening
contexts. Participants will be sampled across later adolescence (15-25 years), a period during which perceptual
weights provide informative heterogeneity. The project will compound its impact by filling an important gap in
understanding of speech processing, building a bridge from invasive electrophysiological studies with patients to
scalp EEG measures of human listeners through combined sEEG+EEG, wedding cl...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10515493
- **Project number:** 3R21DC019217-01A1S1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH AT PITTSBURGH
- **Principal Investigator:** Taylor John Abel
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $32,186
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2021-04-01 → 2023-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10515493

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10515493, Feedback and Feedforward Mechanisms of Speech Perception (3R21DC019217-01A1S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-27 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10515493. Licensed CC0.

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