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Cortical dynamics of word-in-noise recognition
Abstract

Cortical dynamics of word-in-noise recognition

Inyong Choi, Subong Kim, Adam Schwalje and Jihwan Woo
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol.146(4), pp.3048-3048
10/2019
DOI: 10.1121/1.5137565

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Abstract

Understanding speech in background noise is a crucial function for communication. Despite the growing body of research on this topic, it is still unexplained how the neural processes for spoken-word recognition are affected by the acoustic degradation of target speech. To address this question, we utilized high-density EEG simultaneously measured during a word identification task with varying levels of background noise. We hypothesize that, if background noise degrades speech sound, listeners will exhibit less immediate processing of speech information, waiting to access lexical entries until most of the word has been heard. We showed that, as we hypothesized, in the more difficult lower-SNR condition, cortical evoked response to target word is weaker in the auditory cortex while the induced and evoked responses from the inferior frontal cortex are delayed but greater, which may imply delayed lexical processing. This study elucidates what neural mechanisms underly effortful speech understanding in challenging acoustic conditions.

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