# Investigating the neural mechanisms of vibrotactile speech perception

> **NIH NIH F30** · GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $50,520

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY AND ABSTRACT
 Speech perception is one of the most remarkable achievements of the human brain, but how the brain extracts
meaning from a speech signal is still poorly understood. During speech perception, the speech we hear is influenced by
sensory input from our eyes and skin. For example, viewing the face of a speaker improves speech intelligibility. Feeling
the lips and jaws of a speaker alters the perception of heard speech. Amazingly, individuals can be trained perceive speech
through their sense of touch in the absence of auditory input. There is a long history of research on the communication of
speech through the somatosensory system, dating back to 1924. Remarkably, no previous study has investigated the neural
mechanisms of speech perception in the somatosensory system. The goal of this study is to determine how the brain learns
to perceive speech through the sense of touch. The knowledge gained will inform current theories of auditory and visual
speech perception, as well as cross-modal plasticity. This project will also inform the design of tactile speech prostheses
that can serve as alternatives for patients with auditory nerve damage who cannot receive cochlear implants.
 In this study, participants will be trained to perceive vibrotactile speech: tactile patterns generated from recordings
of spoken syllables. Behavioral experiments combined with advanced electroencephalography (EEG) techniques will be
used to test the following hypotheses: 1) the learning of vibrotactile stimuli derived from speech constitutes genuine speech
perception, and 2) the superior temporal gyrus, a key region involved in auditory speech perception, will acquire selectivity
for vibrotactile speech after training.
 One hallmark of speech perception is the ability to recombine speech units to accurately perceive new stimuli.
Therefore, participants will be tested on their ability to successfully generalize to untrained speech stimuli. Multisensory
integration is also an important feature of speech perception: visual and auditory speech are effortlessly integrated in the
brain to enhance perception. An enhancement of visual speech perception by simultaneously presented vibrotactile speech
would provide further evidence that vibrotactile stimuli are learned as speech. To test the hypothesis that visual and
vibrotactile speech is perceptually integrated, participants will be tested on their ability to identify visual-only and visual-
vibrotactile speech.
 To determine how vibrotactile speech is learned and represented by the brain, multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA)
and representation similarity analysis (RSA) will be used. MVPA and RSA are statistical techniques used in cognitive
neuroscience to test hypotheses about how physical stimuli are represented in the brain. Pilot data demonstrates the
feasibility of successfully decoding auditory speech and vibrotactile stimuli from EEG data using MVPA and RSA. These
techniques will be used to test t...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9966945
- **Project number:** 5F30DC016496-04
- **Recipient organization:** GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Patrick Malone
- **Activity code:** F30 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $50,520
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2017-07-01 → 2021-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9966945

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9966945, Investigating the neural mechanisms of vibrotactile speech perception (5F30DC016496-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9966945. Licensed CC0.

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