Effect of spectral degradation on speech intelligibility and cortical representation

Hyo Jung Choi; Jeong-Sug Kyong; Jong Ho Won; Hyun Joon Shim

doi:10.3389/fnins.2024.1368641

Effect of spectral degradation on speech intelligibility and cortical representation

Front Neurosci. 2024 Apr 5:18:1368641. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2024.1368641. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Hyo Jung Choi^#^{1

2}, Jeong-Sug Kyong^#^{3

4}, Jong Ho Won⁵, Hyun Joon Shim^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Nowon Eulji Medical Center, Eulji University School of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
² Eulji Tinnitus and Hearing Research Institute, Nowon Eulji Medical Center, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
³ Sensory-Organ Research Institute, Medical Research Center, Seoul National University School of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
⁴ Department of Radiology, Konkuk University Medical Center, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
⁵ Hyman, Phelps and McNamara, P.C., Washington, DC, United States.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Noise-vocoded speech has long been used to investigate how acoustic cues affect speech understanding. Studies indicate that reducing the number of spectral channel bands diminishes speech intelligibility. Despite previous studies examining the channel band effect using earlier event-related potential (ERP) components, such as P1, N1, and P2, a clear consensus or understanding remains elusive. Given our hypothesis that spectral degradation affects higher-order processing of speech understanding beyond mere perception, we aimed to objectively measure differences in higher-order abilities to discriminate or interpret meaning. Using an oddball paradigm with speech stimuli, we examined how neural signals correlate with the evaluation of speech stimuli based on the number of channel bands measuring N2 and P3b components. In 20 young participants with normal hearing, we measured speech intelligibility and N2 and P3b responses using a one-syllable task paradigm with animal and non-animal stimuli across four vocoder conditions with 4, 8, 16, or 32 channel bands. Behavioral data from word repetition clearly affected the number of channel bands, and all pairs were significantly different (p < 0.001). We also observed significant effects of the number of channels on the peak amplitude [F_{(2.006, 38.117)} = 9.077, p < 0.001] and peak latency [F_{(3, 57)} = 26.642, p < 0.001] of the N2 component. Similarly, the P3b component showed significant main effects of the number of channel bands on the peak amplitude [F_{(2.231, 42.391)} = 13.045, p < 0.001] and peak latency [F_{(3, 57)} = 2.968, p = 0.039]. In summary, our findings provide compelling evidence that spectral channel bands profoundly influence cortical speech processing, as reflected in the N2 and P3b components, a higher-order cognitive process. We conclude that spectrally degraded one-syllable speech primarily affects cortical responses during semantic integration.

Keywords: N2 and P3b; event-related potential; spectral degradation; speech intelligibility; vocoder.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (2020R1I1A3071587).