A listening advantage for native speech is reflected by attention-related activity in auditory cortex
Abstract The listening advantage for native speech is well known, but the neural basis of the effect remains unknown. Here we test the hypothesis that attentional enhancement in auditory cortex is stronger for native speech, using magnetoencephalography. Chinese and German speech stimuli were record...
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| Format: | Article |
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Nature Portfolio
2025-02-01
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| Series: | Communications Biology |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-025-07601-2 |
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| _version_ | 1823861741314899968 |
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| author | Meng Liang Johannes Gerwien Alexander Gutschalk |
| author_facet | Meng Liang Johannes Gerwien Alexander Gutschalk |
| author_sort | Meng Liang |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Abstract The listening advantage for native speech is well known, but the neural basis of the effect remains unknown. Here we test the hypothesis that attentional enhancement in auditory cortex is stronger for native speech, using magnetoencephalography. Chinese and German speech stimuli were recorded by a bilingual speaker and combined into a two-stream, cocktail-party scene, with consistent and inconsistent language combinations. A group of native speakers of Chinese and a group of native speakers of German performed a detection task in the cued target stream. Results show that attention enhances negative-going activity in the temporal response function deconvoluted from the speech envelope. This activity is stronger when the target stream is in the native compared to the non-native language, and for inconsistent compared to consistent language stimuli. We interpret the findings to show that the stronger activity for native speech could be related to better top-down prediction of the native speech streams. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-8d41c836fb28496fab03105ed274832e |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 2399-3642 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-02-01 |
| publisher | Nature Portfolio |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Communications Biology |
| spelling | doaj-art-8d41c836fb28496fab03105ed274832e2025-02-09T12:50:20ZengNature PortfolioCommunications Biology2399-36422025-02-018111210.1038/s42003-025-07601-2A listening advantage for native speech is reflected by attention-related activity in auditory cortexMeng Liang0Johannes Gerwien1Alexander Gutschalk2Department of Neurology, University of Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 400Institute of German as a Foreign Language Philology, University of Heidelberg, Plöck 55Department of Neurology, University of Heidelberg, Im Neuenheimer Feld 400Abstract The listening advantage for native speech is well known, but the neural basis of the effect remains unknown. Here we test the hypothesis that attentional enhancement in auditory cortex is stronger for native speech, using magnetoencephalography. Chinese and German speech stimuli were recorded by a bilingual speaker and combined into a two-stream, cocktail-party scene, with consistent and inconsistent language combinations. A group of native speakers of Chinese and a group of native speakers of German performed a detection task in the cued target stream. Results show that attention enhances negative-going activity in the temporal response function deconvoluted from the speech envelope. This activity is stronger when the target stream is in the native compared to the non-native language, and for inconsistent compared to consistent language stimuli. We interpret the findings to show that the stronger activity for native speech could be related to better top-down prediction of the native speech streams.https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-025-07601-2 |
| spellingShingle | Meng Liang Johannes Gerwien Alexander Gutschalk A listening advantage for native speech is reflected by attention-related activity in auditory cortex Communications Biology |
| title | A listening advantage for native speech is reflected by attention-related activity in auditory cortex |
| title_full | A listening advantage for native speech is reflected by attention-related activity in auditory cortex |
| title_fullStr | A listening advantage for native speech is reflected by attention-related activity in auditory cortex |
| title_full_unstemmed | A listening advantage for native speech is reflected by attention-related activity in auditory cortex |
| title_short | A listening advantage for native speech is reflected by attention-related activity in auditory cortex |
| title_sort | listening advantage for native speech is reflected by attention related activity in auditory cortex |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-025-07601-2 |
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