Do Not Forget the Stimulus: A Missing Control in Naturalistic Studies of Neural Entrainment

A main question in cognitive neuroscience is whether brain rhythms during speech perception reflect intrinsic neural oscillations or simply responses evoked by the acoustic signal. A recent intracranial study interpreted persistent auditory activity after acoustic edges as evidence for entrainment. We show that a similar rhythmic pattern is already present in the speech stimulus itself, supporting an evoked-response account instead. This highlights the need for routine stimulus-signal analyses as a critical control in studies of naturalistic speech processing.