Natural speech representations in the human brain during a cocktail party

buir.advisorÇukur, Tolga
dc.contributor.authorKiretmitçi, İbrahim
dc.date.accessioned2021-09-14T11:02:48Z
dc.date.available2021-09-14T11:02:48Z
dc.date.copyright2021-08
dc.date.issued2021-08
dc.date.submitted2021-09-09
dc.descriptionCataloged from PDF version of article.en_US
dc.descriptionThesis (Ph.D.): Bilkent University, Department of Neuroscience, İhsan Doğramacı Bilkent University, 2021.en_US
dc.descriptionIncludes bibliographical references (leaves 69-91).en_US
dc.description.abstractHumans are remarkably adept in selectively listening to a desired speaker in a crowded environment, while filtering out non-target speakers in the background. Attention is key to solving this difficult cocktail-party task, yet a detailed char-acterization of attentional effects on speech representations is lacking. It remains unclear across what levels of speech features and how much attentional modula-tion occurs in each brain area during the cocktail-party task. Besides, it should be clarified whether unattended speech is represented in cortex during selective listening and if so, at what feature levels its representations are maintained. To address these questions, we recorded whole-brain blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) responses while subjects either passively listened to single-speaker stories, or selectively attended to a male or a female speaker in temporally-overlaid stories in separate experiments. Spectral, articulatory, and semantic models of the natural stories were constructed to enable comprehensive assessments on the hierarchy of speech features. Intrinsic selectivity profiles were identified via vox-elwise models fit to passive listening responses. Attentional modulations were then quantified based on model predictions for attended and unattended stories in the cocktail-party task. We find that acoustic representations are confined to the early auditory cortex whereas linguistic representations are broadly distributed across cortex, that attention causes broad modulations at multiple levels of speech representations (articulatory and semantic) while growing stronger towards later stages of processing, and that unattended speech is represented up to the semantic level in parabelt auditory cortex. These results provide insights on speech perception and attentional mechanisms that underlie the ability to selectively listen to a desired speaker in noisy multi-speaker environments.en_US
dc.description.provenanceSubmitted by Betül Özen (ozen@bilkent.edu.tr) on 2021-09-14T11:02:48Z No. of bitstreams: 1 10418802.pdf: 10899337 bytes, checksum: f6850ece1281c259cb2f13b626140771 (MD5)en
dc.description.provenanceMade available in DSpace on 2021-09-14T11:02:48Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 10418802.pdf: 10899337 bytes, checksum: f6850ece1281c259cb2f13b626140771 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2021-08en
dc.description.statementofresponsibilityby İbrahim Kiremitçien_US
dc.format.extentxxxix, 116 leaves : illustrations (color), charts (color) ; 30 cm.en_US
dc.identifier.itemidB159834
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11693/76514
dc.language.isoEnglishen_US
dc.rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessen_US
dc.subjectFunctional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)en_US
dc.subjectCocktail-partyen_US
dc.subjectDorsal and ventral streamen_US
dc.subjectEncoding modelen_US
dc.subjectNatural speechen_US
dc.titleNatural speech representations in the human brain during a cocktail partyen_US
dc.title.alternativeKokteyl partisi sırasında beyindeki doğal konuşma temsillerien_US
dc.typeThesisen_US
thesis.degree.disciplineNeuroscience
thesis.degree.grantorBilkent University
thesis.degree.levelDoctoral
thesis.degree.namePh.D. (Doctor of Philosophy)

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