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Evidence for a Spoken Word Lexicon in the Auditory Ventral Stream.

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Researchers found an auditory lexicon in the brain

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Science
  • Auditory Processing

Background:

  • Models of speech processing often assume a neural representation for whole words, termed a lexicon.
  • Evidence exists for a visual lexicon in the visual word form area for written words.
  • Support for an analogous auditory lexicon for spoken words is lacking.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the existence of an auditory lexicon for spoken words.
  • To identify the neural basis for auditory word representations.
  • To examine how learning affects these representations.

Main Methods:

  • Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) rapid adaptation techniques were employed.
  • Participants' brain activity was measured while processing spoken words.
  • Novel auditory words were used to assess familiarization effects.

Main Results:

  • Evidence for an auditory lexicon was found in the auditory word form area (left anterior superior temporal gyrus).
  • This area contains highly selective representations for individual spoken words.
  • Familiarization with new spoken words enhanced the selectivity of their neural representations.

Conclusions:

  • The brain possesses a specialized area for representing spoken words, analogous to the visual word form area for written words.
  • Convergent processing strategies exist across visual and auditory ventral streams for word representation.
  • Neural representations for spoken words become more precise with exposure and learning.