Browsing by Author "Goldman, Serge"

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  • Cortical tracking of speech-in-noise develops from childhood to adulthood
    (2019-04-10) Ghinst, Marc Vander; Bourguignon, Mathieu; Niesen, Maxime; Wens, Vincent; Hassid, Sergio; Choufani, Georges; Jousmäki, Veikko; Hari, Riitta; Goldman, Serge; De Tiège, Xavier
     A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
    In multitalker backgrounds, the auditory cortex of adult humans tracks the attended speech stream rather than the global auditory scene. Still, it is unknown whether such preferential tracking also occurs in children whose speech-in-noise (SiN) abilities are typically lower compared with adults. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to investigate the frequency-specific cortical tracking of different elements of a cocktail party auditory scene in 20 children (age range, 6-9 years; 8 females) and 20 adults (age range, 21-40 years; 10 females). During MEG recordings, subjects attended to four different 5 min stories, mixed with different levels of multitalker background at four signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs; noiseless, +5, 0, and -5 dB). Coherence analysis quantified the coupling between the time courses of the MEG activity and attended speech stream, multitalker background, or global auditory scene, respectively. In adults, statistically significant coherence was observed between MEG signals originating from the auditory system and the attended stream at <1, 1-4, and 4-8 Hz in all SNR conditions. Children displayed similar coupling at <1 and 1-4 Hz, but increasing noise impaired the coupling more strongly than in adults. Also, children displayed drastically lower coherence at 4-8 Hz in all SNR conditions. These results suggest that children's difficulties to understand speech in noisy conditions are related to an immature selective cortical tracking of the attended speech streams. Our results also provide unprecedented evidence for an acquired cortical tracking of speech at syllable rate and argue for a progressive development of SiN abilities in humans.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Behaviorally, children are less proficient than adults at understanding speech-in-noise. Here, neuromagnetic signals were recorded while healthy adults and typically developing 6- to 9-year-old children attended to a speech stream embedded in a multitalker background noise with varying intensity. Results demonstrate that auditory cortices of both children and adults selectively track the attended speaker's voice rather than the global acoustic input at phrasal and word rates. However, increments of noise compromised the tracking significantly more in children than in adults. Unexpectedly, children displayed limited tracking of both the attended voice and the global acoustic input at the 4-8 Hz syllable rhythm. Thus, both speech-in-noise abilities and cortical tracking of speech syllable repetition rate seem to mature later in adolescence.
  • Evidence for genetically determined degeneration of proprioceptive tracts in Friedreich ataxia
    (2019-07-09) Marty, Brice; Naeije, Gilles; Bourguignon, Mathieu; Wens, Vincent; Jousmäki, Veikko; Lynch, David R; Gaetz, William; Goldman, Serge; Hari, Riitta; Pandolfo, Massimo; De Tiège, Xavier
     A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
    OBJECTIVE: To assess with magnetoencephalography the developmental vs progressive character of the impairment of spinocortical proprioceptive pathways in Friedreich ataxia (FRDA). METHODS: Neuromagnetic signals were recorded from 16 right-handed patients with FRDA (9 female patients, mean age 27 years, mean Scale for the Assessment and Rating Of ataxia [SARA] score 22.25) and matched healthy controls while they performed right finger movements either actively or passively. The coupling between movement kinematics (i.e., acceleration) and neuromagnetic signals was assessed by the use of coherence at sensor and source levels. Such coupling, that is, the corticokinematic coherence (CKC), specifically indexes proprioceptive afferent inputs to the contralateral primary sensorimotor (cSM1) cortex. Nonparametric permutations and Spearman rank correlation test were used for statistics. RESULTS: In both groups of participants and movement conditions, significant coupling peaked at the cSM1 cortex. Coherence levels were 70% to 75% lower in patients with FRDA than in healthy controls in both movement conditions. In patients with FRDA, coherence levels correlated with genotype alteration (i.e., the size of GAA1 triplet expansion) and the age at symptom onset but not with disease duration or SARA score. CONCLUSION: This study provides electrophysiologic evidence demonstrating that proprioceptive impairment in FRDA is mostly genetically determined and scarcely progressive after symptom onset. It also positions CKC as a reliable, robust, specific marker of proprioceptive impairment in FRDA.
  • Left superior temporal gyrus is coupled to attended speech in a cocktail-party auditory scene
    (2016-02-03) Ghinst, Marc Vander; Bourguignon, Mathieu; de Beeck, Marc Op; Wens, Vincent; Marty, Brice; Hassid, Sergio; Choufani, Georges; Jousmäki, Veikko; Hari, Riitta; Van Bogaert, Patrick; Goldman, Serge; De Tiege, Xavier
     A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
    Using a continuous listening task, we evaluated the coupling between the listener's cortical activity and the temporal envelopes of different sounds in a multitalker auditory scene using magnetoencephalography and corticovocal coherence analysis. Neuromagnetic signals were recorded from 20 right-handed healthy adult humans who listened to five different recorded stories (attended speech streams), one without any multitalker background (No noise) and four mixed with a "cocktail party" multitalker background noise at four signal-to-noise ratios (5, 0, -5, and -10 dB) to produce speech-in-noise mixtures, here referred to as Global scene. Coherence analysis revealed that the modulations of the attended speech stream, presented without multitalker background, were coupled at similar to 0.5 Hz to the activity of both superior temporal gyri, whereas the modulations at 4-8 Hz were coupled to the activity of the right supratemporal auditory cortex. In cocktail party conditions, with the multitalker background noise, the coupling was at both frequencies stronger for the attended speech stream than for the unattended Multitalker background. The coupling strengths decreased as the Multitalker background increased. During the cocktail party conditions, the similar to 0.5 Hz coupling became left-hemisphere dominant, compared with bilateral coupling without the multitalker background, whereas the 4-8 Hz coupling remained right-hemisphere lateralized in both conditions. The brain activity was not coupled to the multitalker background or to its individual talkers. The results highlight the key role of listener's left superior temporal gyri in extracting the slow similar to 0.5 Hz modulations, likely reflecting the attended speech stream within a multitalker auditory scene.
  • MRI-compatible pneumatic stimulator for sensorimotor mapping
    (2019-02-01) Lolli, Valentina; Rovaï, Antonin; Trotta, Nicola; Bourguignon, Mathieu; Goldman, Serge; Sadeghi, Niloufar; Jousmäki, Veikko; De Tiège, Xavier
     A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
    Background: Two major concerns with respect to task-based motor functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) are inadequate participants’ performance as well as intra- and inter-subject variability in execution of the motor action. New method: This study validates the use of an MRI-compatible stimulator based on a pneumatic artificial muscle (PAM) for block-design fMRI mapping of the primary sensorimotor (SM1) cortex in a series of fifteen right-handed healthy subjects. The PAM stimulator elicits computer-controlled timely and reproducible passive movements of fingers/toes. Participants performed comparable active and passive PAM-induced flexion-extensions of the index fingers. Results: Passive movement of the right index finger and passive alternating right and left index finger movement resulted in a significant increase in blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signal in contralateral SM1 cortex in 14/15 and 15/15 subjects respectively. Similar networks were recruited by active and passive index finger movements. However, at the group level, active movement induced significantly higher increases in BOLD signal than passive movement in contralateral SM1 cortex (p < 0.05 Family Wise Error [FWE] corrected), supplementary motor area (p < 0.001 uncorrected), ipsilateral cerebellum (p < 0.001 uncorrected), and bilateral putamina (p < 0.001 uncorrected). Comparison with existing method(s): As compared to the several MRI-compatible robotic devices for computer-controlled passive movement of the fingers that were introduced in the past decades, the proposed PAM-based stimulator is smaller, handier, and easier to use in the MRI setting. Conclusions: PAM-based stimulators can be reliably used for passive sensorimotor fMRI mapping in healthy subjects. Using this approach, bilateral SM1 cortices can be mapped accurately during a single 6-min block-design fMRI protocol.
  • Preserved Coupling between the Reader's Voice and the Listener's Cortical Activity in Autism Spectrum Disorders
    (2014) Clumeck, Catherine; Garcia, Sarah Suarez; Bourguignon, Mathieu; Wens, Vincent; Op de Beeck, Marc; Marty, Brice; Deconinck, Nicolas; Soncarrieu, Marie-Vincianne; Goldman, Serge; Jousmaki, Veikko; Van Bogaert, Patrick; De Tiege, Xavier
     A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
    Purpose Investigating the steadiness of the phase-coupling between the time-course of the reader's voice and brain signals of subjects with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) passively listening to connected speech using magnetoencephalography (MEG). In typically developed subjects, such coupling occurs at the right posterior temporal sulcus (pSTS) for frequencies below 1 Hz, and reflects the neural processing of sentence-level rhythmic prosody at the prelexical level. Methods Cortical neuromagnetic signals were recorded with MEG (Elekta Oy, Finland) while seven right-handed and native French-speaking ASD subjects (six males, one female, range: 13–20 years) listened to live (Live) or recorded (Recorded) voices continuously reading a text in French for five minutes. Coherence was computed between the reader's voice time-course and ASD subjects' MEG signals. Coherent neural sources were subsequently reconstructed using a beamformer. Key findings Significant coupling was found at 0.5 Hz in all ASD subjects in Live and in six subjects in Recorded. Coherent sources were located close to the right pSTS in both conditions. No significant difference was found in coherence levels between Live and Recorded, and between ASD subjects and ten typically developed subjects (right-handed, native French-speaking adults, 5 males, 5 females, age range: 21–38 years) included in a previous study. Significance This study discloses a preserved coupling between the reader's voice and ASD subjects' cortical activity at the right pSTS. These findings support the existence of preserved neural processing of sentence-level rhythmic prosody in ASD. The preservation of early cortical processing of prosodic elements in verbal language might be exploited in therapeutic interventions in ASD.