Training of Working Memory Impacts Neural Processing of Vocal Pitch Regulation (original) (raw)
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The Journal of Neuroscience, 2017
Although working memory (WM) is considered as an emergent property of the speech perception and production systems, the role of WM in sensorimotor integration during speech processing is largely unknown. We conducted two event-related potential experiments with female and male young adults to investigate the contribution of WM to the neurobehavioural processing of altered auditory feedback during vocal production. A delayed match-to-sample task that required participants to indicate whether the pitch feedback perturbations they heard during vocalizations in test and sample sequences matched, elicited significantly larger vocal compensations, larger N1 responses in the left middle and superior temporal gyrus, and smaller P2 responses in the left middle and superior temporal gyrus, inferior parietal lobule, somatosensory cortex, right inferior frontal gyrus, and insula compared with a control task that did not require memory retention of the sequence of pitch perturbations. On the other hand, participants who underwent extensive auditory WM training produced suppressed vocal compensations that were correlated with improved auditory WM capacity, and enhanced P2 responses in the left middle frontal gyrus, inferior parietal lobule, right inferior frontal gyrus, and insula that were predicted by pretraining auditory WM capacity. These findings indicate that WM can enhance the perception of voice auditory feedback errors while inhibiting compensatory vocal behavior to prevent voice control from being excessively influenced by auditory feedback. This study provides the first evidence that auditory-motor integration for voice control can be modulated by top-down influences arising from WM, rather than modulated exclusively by bottom-up and automatic processes.
Separate neural processes for retrieval of voice identity and word content in working memory
Brain Research, 2009
Working memory for voice identity and words was studied to investigate whether the neural system underlying extralinguistic and linguistic information processing is dissociated and whether the possible differences in the distribution of activity are related to specific periods of working memory tasks. Separate analyses of task-related activations evoked during the encoding, maintenance, and recognition periods of the memory tasks were performed.
Long-term pitch memory for music recordings is related to auditory working memory precision
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2018
Most individuals have reliable long-term memories for the pitch of familiar music recordings. This pitch memory (1) appears to be normally distributed in the population, (2) does not depend on explicit musical training and (3) only seems to be weakly related to differences in listening frequency estimates. The present experiment was designed to assess whether individual differences in auditory working memory could explain variance in long-term pitch memory for music recordings. In Experiment 1, participants first completed a musical note adjustment task that has been previously used to assess working memory of musical pitch. Afterward, participants were asked to judge the pitch of well-known music recordings, which either had or had not been shifted in pitch. We found that performance on the pitch working memory task was significantly related to performance in the pitch memory task using well-known recordings, even when controlling for overall musical experience and familiarity with...
The impact of auditory working memory training on the fronto-parietal working memory network
Frontiers in human neuroscience, 2012
Working memory training has been widely used to investigate working memory processes. We have shown previously that visual working memory benefits only from intra-modal visual but not from across-modal auditory working memory training. In the present functional magnetic resonance imaging study we examined whether auditory working memory processes can also be trained specifically and which training-induced activation changes accompany theses effects. It was investigated whether working memory training with strongly distinct auditory materials transfers exclusively to an auditory (intra-modal) working memory task or whether it generalizes to a (across-modal) visual working memory task. We used adaptive n-back training with tonal sequences and a passive control condition. The memory training led to a reliable training gain. Transfer effects were found for the (intra-modal) auditory but not for the (across-modal) visual transfer task. Training-induced activation decreases in the auditor...
Individual Differences in Working Memory Capacity and their Effect on Speech Processing
18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 2015
Though tests of working memory (WM) correlate with scales of language development, it is unclear how WM capacity relates to spoken-language processing. However, Gilbert et al. (2014) have shown that listeners perceptually chunk speech in temporal groups (TGs) and that the span these TGs influences memory of heard items. Assuming that WM capacity links to this processing of speech in groups, listeners with the highest WM spans would be better at recalling items from long TGs. To examine this, we presented two sets of stimuli (utterances and sequences of meaningless syllables) containing long TGs. After each stimuli, listeners had to determine if a target item was previously heard. An analysis using GLME models showed that correct recognition memory of items heard in utterances was significantly better for listeners with high WM spans than for listeners with smaller spans. The effect was marginally significant for sequences of nonsense syllables.
VERBAL AND SPATIAL WORKING MEMORY LOAD HAVE SIMILARLY MINIMAL EFFECTS ON SPEECH PRODUCTION
The goal of the present study was to test the effects of working memory on speech production. Twenty American-English speaking adults produced syntactically complex sentences in tasks that taxed either verbal or spatial working memory. Sentences spoken under load were produced with more errors, fewer prosodic breaks, and at faster rates than sentence produced in the control conditions, but other acoustic correlates of rhythm and intonation did not change. Verbal and spatial working memory had very similar effects on production, suggesting that the different span tasks used to tax working memory merely shifted speakers' attention away from the act of speaking. This finding runs contra the hypothesis of incremental phonological/phonetic encoding, which predicts the manipulation of information in verbal working memory during speech production.
Clinical Neurophysiology, 2005
Objectives: This study investigated the effectiveness of an ERP-compatible Digit Span Backward (ERP-DB) task to determine working memory abilities in healthy participants. Methods: Participants were administered both the standard digit span backward and ERP-DB tasks. The ERP-DB task was divided into two sections, consisting of 2, 4, 6 and 8 (Group 1) and 3, 5, and 7 (Group 2) set sizes. A set of digits was aurally presented, followed by a second set that either corresponded to the reverse order of the first set (correct condition) or had one digit in the sequence replaced by an incorrect digit (incorrect condition). Results: Two posterior positive components were found to distinguish the two conditions; an earlier positive component (P200/P300) was elicited in the correct condition, whereas a comparatively robust and prolonged positive slow wave (PSW) was elicited in the incorrect condition. Furthermore, the PSW and the difference in PSW amplitude between incorrect and correct conditions (dPSW) dissipated as working memory load increased and were related to working memory capacity. Conclusions: The PSW, dPSW and P200/P300 components were found to be associated with working memory abilities and may have the potential to act as neurophysiological markers for the assessment of working memory capacity.
Modulation of slow brain potentials by working memory load in spatial and nonspatial auditory tasks
Neuropsychologia, 2000
Slow event-related brain potentials were recorded from the human scalp during spatial and nonspatial auditory delayed matching-to-sample and n-back tasks to ®nd out whether there are dierences in the distribution of slow potentials during the retention of audiospatial and pitch information. The performance of both the location and pitch tasks produced slow potentials during the delay phase of the memory tasks. The delay-related slow potential was modulated by the amount of information to be processed during the tasks at the parietal±occipital sites. The distribution of mnemonic modulation was, however, not dierent between the tasks. The results suggest that there is integration of auditory information processing in the neuronal networks engaged in mnemonic processing of pitch and location. 7