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speech

Auditory Neuroscience Featured Neuroscience

·May 7, 2025·5 min read

Why Noisy Rooms Are Harder for Some Brains to Handle

New research reveals that the insula, a key brain region, shows altered connectivity in people who struggle to understand speech in noisy environments. Using resting-state MRI, scientists found that the left insula works harder even when the brain is not actively processing sound, suggesting a permanent rewiring linked to hearing difficulties.

Featured Neuroscience

·April 22, 2025·4 min read

Gestures Help Listeners Predict Speech

Humans use hand gestures during conversation, but until now, it wasn’t clear whether listeners actively use these gestures to anticipate speech. A new study using virtual avatars shows that listeners indeed use iconic gestures—like miming typing—to predict what the speaker will say next.

Auditory Neuroscience Featured Neuroscience

·March 7, 2025·4 min read

How the Brain Processes Speech in Real Time

Researchers have developed a computational framework that maps how the brain processes speech during real-world conversations. Using electrocorticography (ECoG) and AI speech models, the study analyzed over 100 hours of brain activity, revealing how different regions handle sounds, speech patterns, and word meanings. The findings show that the brain processes language in a sequence—moving from thought to speech before speaking and working backward to interpret spoken words.

Featured Neuroscience

·March 3, 2025·5 min read

How the Brain Transforms Speech Pitch into Meaning

A new study reveals that Heschl’s gyrus, once thought to only process sound, actually plays a crucial role in interpreting speech melody, or prosody. Researchers tracked brain activity in epilepsy patients with implanted electrodes and found that this region encodes pitch accents as meaningful linguistic signals, separate from word sounds.

This shows a modern human and a Neanderthal.

Featured Genetics Neuroscience

·February 18, 2025·8 min read

Genetic Link Between Humans and the Evolution of Speech Found

New research suggests a genetic variant in the NOVA1 protein may have played a key role in the emergence of human speech. Scientists introduced this exclusively human variant into mice and observed altered vocalizations, indicating a potential role in vocal communication.

Featured Neuroscience

·December 17, 2024·4 min read

Baby Babble Syncs With Heartbeats to Shape Speech Development

Infants' heart rate rhythms are closely linked to their early vocalizations, including coos, babbles, and emerging words. Researchers found that babies were most likely to produce sounds when their heart rate reached a peak or trough, with speech-like sounds occurring during heart rate deceleration.

Auditory Neuroscience Featured Neuroscience

·October 6, 2024·3 min read

Hearing Loss Disrupts Speech Coordination

A recent study reveals that hearing plays a vital role in coordinating speech movements. Researchers found that when individuals briefly couldn't hear their own speech, their ability to control their jaw and tongue movements declined.

Featured Neuroscience Open Neuroscience Articles Psychology

·October 2, 2024·3 min read

Humans Slow Speech to Help Dogs Understand

A new study reveals that humans naturally slow their speech when talking to dogs, which helps dogs better understand commands. Researchers analyzed speech rates and brain responses in 30 dogs and 27 humans across five languages, finding that humans speak at around three syllables per second to their pets, compared to four syllables when talking to other humans.

Featured Neurology Neuroscience

·September 30, 2024·5 min read

Right-Sided DBS: Effective Parkinson’s Treatment Without Speech Loss

A new study has shown that unilateral deep brain stimulation (DBS) on the right side of the brain improves motor symptoms in Parkinson's patients without causing significant declines in verbal fluency. Researchers found that DBS on the left hemisphere led to more noticeable declines in word retrieval and generation.

Featured Neurology Neuroscience

·September 27, 2024·8 min read

Improving Voice Recognition for People with Speech Disabilities

A new study shows that automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems trained on speech from people with Parkinson’s disease are 30% more accurate in transcribing similar speech patterns. Researchers collected over 151 hours of recordings from participants with varying degrees of dysarthria, a speech disorder common in Parkinson’s patients, and used the data to train ASR systems.

Featured Neuroscience

·May 31, 2024·5 min read

Infants Hear More Speech Than Music At Home

A new study compared the amount of music and speech infants hear at home. Researchers found that infants are exposed to more speech than music, with the gap increasing as they grow.

Featured Neuroscience Open Neuroscience Articles

·May 29, 2024·4 min read

Babies’ Squeals and Growls Show Early Vocal Practice Patterns

Infants' vocalizations, like squeals and growls, appear in significant clusters, suggesting active noisemaking play and sound practice. Researchers analyzed recordings from 130 infants and found 40% of squeals and growls clustered significantly.