Speech encoding by coupled cortical theta and gamma oscillations

Hyafil, Alexandre; Fontolan, Lorenzo; Kabdebon, Claire; Gutkin, Boris; Giraud Mamessier, Anne-Lise

doi:10.7554/eLife.06213

Scientific article

English

Speech encoding by coupled cortical theta and gamma oscillations

Contributors

Hyafil, Alexandre; Fontolan, Lorenzo; Kabdebon, Claire; Gutkin, Boris; Giraud Mamessier, Anne-Lise

Published in

eLife, vol. 4, e06213

Publication date

2015

Abstract

Many environmental stimuli present a quasi-rhythmic structure at different timescales that the brain needs to decompose and integrate. Cortical oscillations have been proposed as instruments of sensory de-multiplexing, i.e., the parallel processing of different frequency streams in sensory signals. Yet their causal role in such a process has never been demonstrated. Here, we used a neural microcircuit model to address whether coupled theta-gamma oscillations, as observed in human auditory cortex, could underpin the multiscale sensory analysis of speech. We show that, in continuous speech, theta oscillations can flexibly track the syllabic rhythm and temporally organize the phoneme-level response of gamma neurons into a code that enables syllable identification. The tracking of slow speech fluctuations by theta oscillations, and its coupling to gamma-spiking activity both appeared as critical features for accurate speech encoding. These results demonstrate that cortical oscillations can be a key instrument of speech de-multiplexing, parsing, and encoding.

UNIGE affiliation entities

Faculté de médecine / Section de médecine fondamentale / Département de neurosciences fondamentales

UNIGE research groups

Groupe Anne-Lise Giraud (939)

Citation (ISO format)

HYAFIL, Alexandre et al. Speech encoding by coupled cortical theta and gamma oscillations. In: eLife, 2015, vol. 4, p. e06213. doi: 10.7554/eLife.06213

Article (Published version)

Identifiers

PID : unige:75899
DOI : 10.7554/eLife.06213
PMID : 26023831

Journal ISSN

2050-084X

716views

453downloads

Creation

01/09/2015 12:37:00

First validation

01/09/2015 12:37:00

Update

14/03/2023 23:41:14

Status update

14/03/2023 23:41:14

Last indexation

31/10/2024 01:29:38

Speech encoding by coupled cortical theta and gamma oscillations

Contributors

Published in

Publication date

Abstract

UNIGE affiliation entities

UNIGE research groups

Citation (ISO format)

Main files (1)

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Journal ISSN

Technical informations

Creation

First validation

Update

Status update

Last indexation