Temporal integration of vowel periodicity in the auditory cortex

Cortical sensitivity to the periodicity of speech sounds has been evidenced by larger, more anterior responses to periodic than to aperiodic vowels in several non-invasive studies of the human brain. The current study investigated the temporal integration underlying the cortical sensitivity to speech periodicity by studying the increase in periodicity-specific cortical activation with growing stimulus duration. Periodicity-specific activation was estimated from magnetoencephalography as the differences between the N1m responses elicited by periodic and aperiodic vowel stimuli. The duration of the vowel stimuli with a fundamental frequency (F0=106 Hz) representative of typical male speech was varied in units corresponding to the vowel fundamental period (9.4 ms) and ranged from one to ten units. Cortical sensitivity to speech periodicity, as reflected by larger and more anterior responses to periodic than to aperiodic stimuli, was observed when stimulus duration was 3 cycles or more. Further, for stimulus durations of 5 cycles and above, response latency was shorter for the periodic than for the aperiodic stimuli. Together the current results define a temporal window of integration for the periodicity of speech sounds in the F0 range of typical male speech. The length of this window is 3-5 cycles, or 30-50 ms.