Evidence for Cerebellar Contributions to Adaptive Plasticity in Speech Perception.
Human speech perception rapidly adapts to maintain comprehension under adverse listening conditions. For example, with exposure listeners can adapt to heavily accented speech produced by a non-native speaker. Outside the domain of speech perception, adaptive changes in sensory and motor processing have been attributed to cerebellar functions. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging study investigates whether adaptation in speech perception also involves the cerebellum. Acoustic stimuli were distorted using a vocoding plus spectral-shift manipulation and presented in a word recognition task. Regions in the cerebellum that showed differences before versus after adaptation were identified, and the relationship between activity during adaptation and subsequent behavioral improvements was examined. These analyses implicated the right Crus I region of the cerebellum in adaptive changes in speech perception. A functional correlation analysis with the right Crus I as a seed region probed for cerebral cortical regions with covarying hemodynamic responses during the adaptation period. The results provided evidence of a functional network between the cerebellum and language-related regions in the temporal and parietal lobes of the cerebral cortex. Consistent with known cerebellar contributions to sensorimotor adaptation, cerebro-cerebellar interactions may support supervised learning mechanisms that rely on sensory prediction error signals in speech perception.
Center for Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, Pittsburgh, PA, USA Current address: Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA.
Sara
S
Guediche
Center for Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, Pittsburgh, PA, USA Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
Lori L
LL
Holt
Center for Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, Pittsburgh, PA, USA Current address: Brain Corporation, San Diego, CA, USA.
Patryk
P
Laurent
Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, Pittsburgh, PA, USA Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
Sung-Joo
SJ
Lim
Center for Neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, Pittsburgh, PA, USA Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
Julie A
JA
Fiez
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D000222:Adaptation, Physiological / Q000502:physiology*; D000223:Adaptation, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002531:Cerebellum / Q000502:physiology*; D002560:Cerebrovascular Circulation / Q000502:physiology; D005071:Evoked Potentials; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007807:Language Tests; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010100:Oxygen / Q000097:blood; D046709:Pattern Recognition, Physiological / Q000502:physiology; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013060:Speech; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
D010100:Oxygen
adaptation; cerebellum; fMRI; perceptual learning; supervised learning