Véronique Boulenger | Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique / French National Centre for Scientific Research (original) (raw)

Papers by Véronique Boulenger

A new perspective on cognition views cortical cell assemblies linking together knowledge about ac... more A new perspective on cognition views cortical cell assemblies linking together knowledge about actions and perceptions not only as the vehicles of integrated action and perception processing but, furthermore, as a brain basis for a wide range of higher cortical functions, including attention, meaning and concepts, sequences, goals and intentions, and even communicative social interaction. This article explains mechanisms relevant to mechanistic action perception theory, points to concrete neuronal circuits in brains along with artificial neuronal network simulations, and summarizes recent brain imaging and other experimental data documenting the role of action perception circuits in cognition, language and communication.

BioRXiv, 2020

Convincing evidence for synchronization of cortical oscillations to normal rate speech and artifi... more Convincing evidence for synchronization of cortical oscillations to normal rate speech and artificially accelerated speech has been offered. However, the case of natural speech rate variations, which are ubiquitous in everyday life, has been largely overlooked. Here, we directly compared changes in the properties of cortico-acoustic coupling when speech naturally shifts from normal to fast rate and when it is artificially accelerated. Neuromagnetic brain signals of 24 normal-hearing adults were recorded with magnetoencephalography (MEG) while they listened to natural normal (~6 syllables/s), natural fast (~9 syllables/s) and time-compressed (~9 syllables/s) sentences, as well as to envelope-matched amplitude-modulated noise. We estimated coherence between the envelope of the acoustic input and MEG source time-series in two frequency bands corresponding to the mean syllable rates of the normal and fast speech stimuli. We found that listening to natural speech at normal and fast rates was associated with coupling between speech signal envelope and neural oscillations in right auditory and (pre)motor cortices. This oscillatory alignment occurred within [5.7-7.7 Hz] for normal rate sentences and shifted up to [8-10 Hz] for naturally-produced fast speech, mirroring the increase in syllable rate between the two conditions. Unexpectedly, despite being generated at the same rate as naturally-produced fast speech, the time-compressed sentences did not lead to significant cortico-acoustic coupling at [8-10 Hz]. In addition, neural activity in articulatory cortex exhibited stronger tuning to natural fast rather than to artificially accelerated speech, reflecting enhanced mapping to articulatory features of natural speech. Finally, we observed no coupling when participants listened to amplitude-modulated noise, which suggests that envelope tracking does not only reflect passive acoustic tracking but is sensitive to linguistic information.

Perception of speech rhythm requires the auditory system to track temporal envelope fluctuations,... more Perception of speech rhythm requires the auditory system to track temporal envelope fluctuations, which carry syllabic and stress information. Reduced sensitivity to rhythmic acoustic cues has been evidenced in children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI), impeding syllabic parsing and speech decoding. Our study investigated whether these children experience specific difficulties processing fast rate speech as compared with typically developing (TD) children.

En situation écologique, le langage parlé est bruité par des sons environnementaux, comme une dis... more En situation écologique, le langage parlé est bruité par des sons environnementaux, comme une discussion voisine ou encore les bruits de la rue. Nos recherches visent à explorer les processus impliqués dans cette situation de compréhension de parole bruitée (effet cocktail party ...

Speech Communication, 2010

This study aimed at characterizing the cognitive processes that come into play during speech-in-s... more This study aimed at characterizing the cognitive processes that come into play during speech-in-speech comprehension by examining lexical competitions between target speech and concurrent multi-talker babble. We investigated the effects of number of simultaneous talkers (2, 4, 6 or 8) and of the token frequency of the words that compose the babble (high or low) on lexical decision to target words. Results revealed a decrease in performance as measured by reaction times to targets with increasing number of concurrent talkers. Crucially, the frequency of words in the babble significantly affected performance: high-frequency babble interfered more strongly (by lengthening reaction times) with word recognition than low-frequency babble. This informational masking was particularly salient when only two talkers were present in the babble due to the availability of identifiable lexical items from the background. Our findings suggest that speech comprehension in multi-talker babble can trigger competitions at the lexical level between target and background. They further highlight the importance of investigating speech-in-speech comprehension situations as they may provide crucial information on interactive and competitive mechanisms that occur in real-time during word recognition.

Brain and Language, 2011

When listening to speech in everyday-life situations, our cognitive system must often cope with s... more When listening to speech in everyday-life situations, our cognitive system must often cope with signal instabilities such as sudden breaks, mispronunciations, interfering noises or reverberations potentially causing disruptions at the acoustic/phonetic interface and preventing efficient lexical access and semantic integration. The physiological mechanisms allowing listeners to react instantaneously to such fast and unexpected perturbations in order to maintain intelligibility of the delivered message are still partly unknown. The present electroencephalography (EEG) study aimed at investigating the cortical responses to real-time detection of a sudden acoustic/phonetic change occurring in connected speech and how these mechanisms interfere with semantic integration. Participants listened to sentences in which final words could contain signal reversals along the temporal dimension (time-reversed speech) of varying durations and could have either a low-or high-cloze probability within sentence context. Results revealed that early detection of the acoustic/phonetic change elicited a fronto-central negativity shortly after the onset of the manipulation that matched the spatiotemporal features of the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) recorded in the same participants during an oddball paradigm. Time reversal also affected late event-related potentials (ERPs) reflecting semantic expectancies (N400) differently when words were predictable or not from the sentence context. These findings are discussed in the context of brain signatures to transient acoustic/phonetic variations in speech. They contribute to a better understanding of natural speech comprehension as they show that acoustic/phonetic information and semantic knowledge strongly interact under adverse conditions.

Speech …, Jan 1, 2010

This study aimed at characterizing the cognitive processes that come into play during speech-insp... more This study aimed at characterizing the cognitive processes that come into play during speech-inspeech comprehension by examining lexical competitions between target speech and concurrent multi-talker babble. We investigated the effects of number of simultaneous talkers (2, 4, 6 or 8) and of the token frequency of the words that compose the babble (high or low) on lexical decision to target words. Results revealed a decrease in performance as measured by reaction times to targets with increasing number of concurrent talkers. Crucially, the frequency of words in the babble significantly affected performance: high-frequency babble interfered more strongly (by lengthening reaction times) with word recognition than low-frequency babble. This informational masking was particularly salient when only two talkers were present in the babble due to the availability of identifiable lexical items from the background. Our findings suggest that speech comprehension in multi-talker babble can trigger competitions at the lexical level between target and background. They further highlight the importance of investigating speechin-speech comprehension situations as they may provide crucial information on interactive and competitive mechanisms that occur in real-time during word recognition.

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2014

The reported studies have aimed to investigate whether informational masking in a multi-talker ba... more The reported studies have aimed to investigate whether informational masking in a multi-talker background relies on semantic interference between the background and target using an adapted semantic priming paradigm. In 3 experiments, participants were required to perform a lexical decision task on a target item embedded in backgrounds composed of 1-4 voices. These voices were Semantically Consistent (SC) voices (i.e., pronouncing words sharing semantic features with the target) or Semantically Inconsistent (SI) voices (i.e., pronouncing words semantically unrelated to each other and to the target). In the first experiment, backgrounds consisted of 1 or 2 SC voices. One and 2 SI voices were added in Experiments 2 and 3, respectively. The results showed a semantic priming effect only in the conditions where the number of SC voices was greater than the number of SI voices, suggesting that semantic priming depended on prime intelligibility and strategic processes. However, even if backgrounds were composed of 3 or 4 voices, reducing intelligibility, participants were able to recognize words from these backgrounds, although no semantic priming effect on the targets was observed. Overall this finding suggests that informational masking can occur at a semantic level if intelligibility is sufficient. Based on the Effortfulness Hypothesis, we also suggest that when there is an increased difficulty in extracting target signals (caused by a relatively high number of voices in the background), more cognitive resources were allocated to formal processes (i.e., acoustic and phonological), leading to a decrease in available resources for deeper semantic processing of background words, therefore preventing semantic priming from occurring.

Lettre des Neurosciences, vol 46, 2014

Actes des Journées d'Etudes sur la Parole, Jun 2014

Notre système cognitif est capable de s'adapter rapidement aux variations de débit de parole afin... more Notre système cognitif est capable de s'adapter rapidement aux variations de débit de parole afin de comprendre le message. Des études suggèrent que cette adaptation active les régions prémotrices du cerveau, impliquées dans la production de parole. Cette étude examine comment les enfants présentant des troubles expressifs du langage traitent la parole produite à un débit rapide. Dix-sept enfants (8-13 ans) présentant une dysphasie expressive, appariés à des enfants contrôles, ont réalisé une tâche de jugement sémantique de phrases produites à trois débits de parole (normal, naturel rapide et compressé artificiellement). Les performances des enfants dysphasiques sont plus faibles, en termes de temps de réponse et d'indice de sensibilité (d'), que les contrôles, plus particulièrement lorsque le débit est rapide. Un déficit de perception de parole rapide semble donc exister chez ces enfants, suggérant un rôle des processus impliqués dans la production de la parole dans les processus de perception.

Neuropsychologia, 2014

Adaptation to artificially time-compressed speech and natural fast speech has been previously sho... more Adaptation to artificially time-compressed speech and natural fast speech has been previously shown in adult listeners, with significant improvement of performance within 5-10 sentences. In the present study, we investigated whether typically developing children also adapt to such variations in speech rate. Eighteen children performed a semantic judgment task on normal speed sentences, natural fast sentences and time-compressed sentences. The three speech rate conditions were presented in separate blocks to examine adaptation over exposure time. Analysis of response times broken down into miniblocks of 5 sentences of the same rate reveals that whereas performance for normal sentences remains stable over time, response times become significantly shorter after listening to the first 5 sentences, both in the natural fast and time-compressed conditions. Therefore, children find it more difficult to understand natural fast and time-compressed sentences as revealed by increased response times, but after listening to 5 sentences, their performance improves and becomes comparable to that for normal sentences. These preliminary results suggest that children adapt to speech rate changes as rapidly as adults and that they adapt to both types of speech distortion (natural fast and timecompressed) in the same way.

RESUME __________________________________________________________________________________________... more RESUME ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Étant données les conséquences de l'effet d'aimant perceptif sur la théorie phonologique et l'absence de consensus pour déterminer s'il relève de processus de bas niveau liés aux aspects acoustiques de certaines voyelles ou de processus de haut niveaux associés à l'acquisition du langage, nous avons mené deux expériences pilotes tentant de répliquer l'effet d'aimant perceptif avec des voyelles du français, quantiques (/a/ et /i/) et non quantiques (/ɛ/ et /e/). Les premiers résultats d'une tâche de discrimination témoignent d'une sensibilité plus faible autour des prototypes quantiques qu'autour des prototypes non quantiques, ce qui est en faveur de l'interprétation quantique (acoustique) de l'effet d'aimant perceptif.

This paper investigates speech-in-noise comprehension in adult dyslexics. We report results showi... more This paper investigates speech-in-noise comprehension in adult dyslexics. We report results showing that dyslexics experience difficulties in identifying speech in multi-talker babble but that their performance is influenced by lexical variables in the same way as for normal readers. We then assess the link between speech-in-noise comprehension deficits in dyslexics and the functionality of the auditory efferent system involved in the descending control from cortical areas to the cochlea. Results reveal that despite normal functioning of the efferent system in attenuating acoustic otoemissions, dyslexics show a lack of asymmetry of this system compared to normal readers. This specific lateralization pattern could reflect a lack of asymmetry of central language areas and contribute to the speech-in-noise comprehension deficit in dyslexia.

The relation between language and theory of mind remains in need of clarification, both at the le... more The relation between language and theory of mind remains in need of clarification, both at the level of language evolution, language acquisition and the very content of theory of mind. This raises the question of the very nature of theory of mind. Is it a monolithic, more or less modular mental faculty; or is it a combination of different mechanisms, some of which may be rather low-level? How much theory is there in theory of mind and how much is needed to evolve a language? Very much the same questions apply to language acquisition. This workshop will attempt to analyse the coevolution of these two uniquely human capacities, their co-dependence and interaction. The Workshop is organized by the Institut des Sciences Cognitives CNRS, Lyon. Starting from February 2004, a new paper will be put on line and open to discussion every two weeks. The research presented in this workshop is supported in the framework of the European Science Foundation EUROCORES programme.

Mes premiers remerciements vont naturellement à ma directrice de thèse, Tatjana Nazir, qui m'a ac... more Mes premiers remerciements vont naturellement à ma directrice de thèse, Tatjana Nazir, qui m'a accordé sa confiance depuis bientôt cinq ans. Je la remercie de son aide et de ses conseils scientifiques aussi précieux qu'indispensables, qui, j'en suis sûre, me seront utiles tout au long de ma carrière.

Brain and language, Jan 1, 2011

When listening to speech in everyday-life situations, our cognitive system must often cope with s... more When listening to speech in everyday-life situations, our cognitive system must often cope with signal instabilities such as sudden breaks, mispronunciations, interfering noises or reverberations potentially causing disruptions at the acoustic/phonetic interface and preventing efficient lexical access and semantic integration. The physiological mechanisms allowing listeners to react instantaneously to such fast and unexpected perturbations in order to maintain intelligibility of the delivered message are still partly unknown. The present electroencephalography (EEG) study aimed at investigating the cortical responses to real-time detection of a sudden acoustic/phonetic change occurring in connected speech and how these mechanisms interfere with semantic integration. Participants listened to sentences in which final words could contain signal reversals along the temporal dimension (time-reversed speech) of varying durations and could have either a low-or high-cloze probability within sentence context. Results revealed that early detection of the acoustic/phonetic change elicited a fronto-central negativity shortly after the onset of the manipulation that matched the spatio-temporal features of the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) recorded in the same participants during an oddball paradigm. Time reversal also affected late event-related potentials (ERPs) reflecting semantic expectancies (N400) differently when words were predictable or not from the sentence context. These findings are discussed in the context of brain signatures to transient acoustic/phonetic variations in speech. They contribute to a better understanding of natural speech comprehension as they show that acoustic/phonetic information and semantic knowledge strongly interact under adverse conditions.

BioRXiv, 2020

Speech Communication, 2010

Brain and Language, 2011

Speech …, Jan 1, 2010

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2014

Lettre des Neurosciences, vol 46, 2014

Actes des Journées d'Etudes sur la Parole, Jun 2014

Neuropsychologia, 2014

Brain and language, Jan 1, 2011

When listening to speech in everyday-life situations, our cognitive system must often cope with s... more When listening to speech in everyday-life situations, our cognitive system must often cope with signal instabilities such as sudden breaks, mispronunciations, interfering noises or reverberations potentially causing disruptions at the acoustic/phonetic interface and preventing efficient lexical access and semantic integration. The physiological mechanisms allowing listeners to react instantaneously to such fast and unexpected perturbations in order to maintain intelligibility of the delivered message are still partly unknown. The present electroencephalography (EEG) study aimed at investigating the cortical responses to real-time detection of a sudden acoustic/phonetic change occurring in connected speech and how these mechanisms interfere with semantic integration. Participants listened to sentences in which final words could contain signal reversals along the temporal dimension (time-reversed speech) of varying durations and could have either a low-or high-cloze probability within sentence context. Results revealed that early detection of the acoustic/phonetic change elicited a fronto-central negativity shortly after the onset of the manipulation that matched the spatio-temporal features of the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) recorded in the same participants during an oddball paradigm. Time reversal also affected late event-related potentials (ERPs) reflecting semantic expectancies (N400) differently when words were predictable or not from the sentence context. These findings are discussed in the context of brain signatures to transient acoustic/phonetic variations in speech. They contribute to a better understanding of natural speech comprehension as they show that acoustic/phonetic information and semantic knowledge strongly interact under adverse conditions.