A comparison of oscillatory characteristics in covert speech and speech perception

TL;DR

This study compares neural oscillations in covert speech and speech perception, revealing distinct frequency band engagement and phase-amplitude coupling patterns, and is the first to characterize covert speech oscillatory activity.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of oscillatory characteristics in covert speech, highlighting differences from speech perception and the role of specific frequency bands.

Findings

Perception involves all frequencies with prominent theta and gamma activity.

Covert speech favors higher frequencies with increased gamma activity.

Perception shows significant theta-gamma phase-amplitude coupling, which is suppressed in covert speech.

Abstract

Covert speech, the silent production of words in the mind, has been studied increasingly to understand and decode thoughts. This task has often been compared to speech perception as it brings about similar topographical activation patterns in common brain areas. In studies of speech comprehension, neural oscillations are thought to play a key role in the sampling of speech at varying temporal scales. However, very little is known about the role of oscillations in covert speech. In this study, we aimed to determine to what extent each oscillatory frequency band is used to process words in covert speech and speech perception tasks. Secondly, we asked whether the {\theta} and {\gamma} activity in the two tasks are related through phase-amplitude coupling (PAC). First, continuous wavelet transform was performed on epoched signals and subsequently two-tailed t-tests between two classes were conducted to determine statistical distinctions in frequency and time. While the perception task dynamically uses all frequencies with more prominent {\theta} and {\gamma} activity, the covert task favoured higher frequencies with significantly higher {\gamma} activity than perception. Moreover, the perception condition produced significant {\theta}-{\gamma} PAC suggesting a linkage of syllabic and phonological sampling. Although this was found to be suppressed in the covert condition, we found significant pseudo-coupling between perception {\theta} and covert speech {\gamma}. We report that covert speech processing is largely conducted by higher frequencies, and that the {\gamma}- and {\theta}-bands may function similarly and differently across tasks, respectively. This study is the first to characterize covert speech in terms of neural oscillatory engagement. Future studies are directed to explore oscillatory characteristics and inter-task relationships with a more diverse vocabulary.