The hierarchical cortical organization of human speech processing (de Heer, Huth, Griffiths, Gallant & Theunissen, J. Neurosci., 2017)
July 5, 2017
We used voxelwise encoding models and variance partitioning to investigate how the brain transforms speech sounds into meaning. Speech processing involves a cortical hierarchy: spectral features in A1, articulatory features in STG, and semantic features in STS and beyond. Both hemispheres are equally involved, and semantic representations appear surprisingly early in the hierarchy.