主题:Information Integration and Selection in Speech Processing

报告人:丁鼐 研究员

时间:2018年12月3日(周一),8:30-9:30

地点:北京大学王克桢楼1113会议室

摘要:

Speech perception is a unique and important function of the human brain, and is a classic demonstration of the human brain’s capacity to process complex sensory sequences. To understand a spoken passage, the brain has to integrate local speech units such as words into larger structures such as sentences. Furthermore, since speech comprehension is often achieved in noisy environments, the brain has to constantly filter out interferences and selectively process speech information of interest. My research focuses on how the brain integrates and selects information over time during speech perception. It is demonstrated that the brain actively groups local units into larger structures and constructs representations of a hierarchy of speech units, such as syllables, words, phrases, and sentences. Specifically, linguistic units of different sizes are represented by neural oscillations on different time scales. Furthermore, stimulus-synchronized low-frequency neural activity, originating from both sensory and motor systems, is critical to implement temporal attention, i.e., information selection in time. Finally, recent studies on language learning and the processing of non-speech auditory/visual sequences will be discussed.