Topic: Human speech

Animal vocal sequences including human speech are organized into hierarchical sequences composed of voice primitives. In human speech, these primitives are known as phonemes or phones. By contrast, the corresponding vocal primitives in animals have been poorly studied. What sets of vocal gestures span the vocal repertoire of an animal and what regularities apply to animal vocal repertoires across individuals and across species? In birdsong, the roughly hundred-millisecond long song syllables are often considered basic vocal units, since syllables display little acoustic variability within t

Human speech allows to convey information via different execution forms. Thus, on the behavioral level, speech content is independent from production and execution forms. However, it remains unclear whether such a content dimension can be found on the neural level and whether it is possible to dissociate it from the motor dimension. To address this, we recorded magnetoencephalography (MEG) in human subjects that performed two rule-based vocalization tasks. In the first experiment, content (one of two vowels) and production (overt or covert) were instructed separately and in random order. Apply