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Abstract
When looking at a speaking person, the analysis of facial kinematics contributes to language discrimination and to the decoding of the time flow of visual speech. To disentangle these two factors, we investigated behavioural and fMRI responses to familiar and unfamiliar languages when observing speech gestures with natural or reversed kinematics. Twenty Italian volunteers viewed silent video-clips of speech shown as recorded (Forward, biological motion) or reversed in time (Backward, non-biological motion), in Italian (familiar language) or Arabic (non-familiar language). fMRI revealed that language (Italian/Arabic) and time-rendering (Forward/Backward) modulated distinct areas in the ventral occipito-temporal cortex, suggesting that visual speech analysis begins in this region, earlier than previously thought. Left premotor ventral (superior subdivision) and dorsal areas were preferentially activated with the familiar language independently of time-rendering, challenging the view that the role of these regions in speech processing is purely articulatory. The left premotor ventral region in the frontal operculum, thought to include part of the Broca’s area, responded to the natural familiar language, consistent with the hypothesis of motor simulation of speech gestures.
Highlights
Watching the mouth movements of a speaker may help listeners to decode speech in a noisy environment [1,2,3], and may even alter the auditory perception of speech as in the McGurk effect [4,5,6,7,8,9].Observers can discriminate fairly reliably between silent video-clips of a speaker played as recorded (Forward mode) or time-reversed (Backward mode) [1]
We investigated the neural circuits engaged by language familiarity (Italian vs Arabic) and natural kinematics of biological motion (Forward vs Backward) of visible speech
It has been shown that a region in the left posterior temporal cortex, the so-called temporal visual speech area (TVSA), is activated in visual phonetic discrimination [38], possibly integrating information coming from high-level visual areas in occipito-temporal cortex (OTC) [3,41,134]
Summary
Watching the mouth movements of a speaker (so called, visual speech) may help listeners to decode speech in a noisy environment [1,2,3], and may even alter the auditory perception of speech as in the McGurk effect [4,5,6,7,8,9].Observers can discriminate fairly reliably between silent video-clips of a speaker played as recorded (Forward mode) or time-reversed (Backward mode) [1]. It was argued that natural kinematics (recognition of biological motion) rather than linguistic competences had a role in this task [1].
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