title: You talkin' to me? Communicative talker gaze activates left-lateralized superior temporal cortex during perception of degraded speech.
abstract: Neuroimaging studies of speech perception have consistently indicated a left-hemisphere dominance in the temporal lobes' responses to intelligible auditory speech signals (McGettigan and Scott, 2012). However, there are important communicative cues that cannot be extracted from auditory signals alone, including the direction of the talker's gaze. Previous work has implicated the superior temporal cortices in processing gaze direction, with evidence for predominantly right-lateralized responses (Carlin & Calder, 2013). The aim of the current study was to investigate whether the lateralization of responses to talker gaze differs in an auditory communicative context. Participants in a functional MRI experiment watched and listened to videos of spoken sentences in which the auditory intelligibility and talker gaze direction were manipulated factorially. We observed a left-dominant temporal lobe sensitivity to the talker's gaze direction, in which the left anterior superior temporal sulcus/gyrus and temporal pole showed an enhanced response to direct gaze - further investigation revealed that this pattern of lateralization was modulated by auditory intelligibility. Our results suggest flexibility in the distribution of neural responses to social cues in the face within the context of a challenging speech perception task.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham Hill, Egham TW20 0EX, UK; Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR, UK. Electronic address: Carolyn.McGettigan@rhul.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Carolyn
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: McGettigan
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR, UK.
authors.forename: Kyle
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Jasmin
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR, UK; Donders Institute, Radboud University, Montessorilaan 3, 6525 HR Nijmegen, Netherlands.
authors.forename: Frank
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Eisner
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR, UK; Department of Otolaryngology, University of California, San Francisco, 513 Parnassus Avenue, San Francisco, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Zarinah K
authors.initials: ZK
authors.lastname: Agnew
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR, UK; Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, Institute of Neurology, University College London, 12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK.
authors.forename: Oliver J
authors.initials: OJ
authors.lastname: Josephs
authors.affiliation: MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, 15 Chaucer Road, Cambridge CB2 7EF, UK.
authors.forename: Andrew J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Calder
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR, UK.
authors.forename: Rosemary
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Jessop
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR, UK; Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, Institute of Neurology, University College London, 12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK.
authors.forename: Rebecca P
authors.initials: RP
authors.lastname: Lawson
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR, UK.
authors.forename: Mona
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Spielmann
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR, UK.
authors.forename: Sophie K
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Scott
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D003142:Communication; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D010100:Oxygen / Q000097:blood; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology*; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D010100:Oxygen
keywords: FMRI; Gaze; Laterality; Speech comprehension