Poster A62, Tuesday, August 20, 2019, 10:15 am – 12:00 pm, Restaurant Hall
Sex-related differences in sensorimotor processing of different speakers
David Thornton1, David Jenson2, Tim Saltuklaroglu3, Ashley Harkrider3;1Gallaudet University, 2Washington State University, 3University of Tennessee Health Science Center
Growing evidence that speech perception tasks elicit sensorimotor activity, and that this activity varies due to context, sex, cognitive load, and cognitive ability. However, it is unknown as to whether the sex of the speaker and demands of the task differentially effect males and females during speech perception tasks. This study investigated whether speaker sex and task demands (i.e. passive listening or active discrimination) influence sensorimotor and auditory cortical activity in males and females differently. Raw EEG data were collected from 27 males and 29 females during passive listening to, and discrimination of /ba/ and /da/ syllable pairs spoken by a synthetic female or male speaker. Independent component analysis identified sensorimotor and auditory components characterized by alpha/beta and alpha peaks, respectively. Time-frequency decomposition revealed no significant differences between male and female groups in any testing conditions. Both males and females displayed stronger mu activation in response to male speakers compared to female speakers before, during, and after stimulus presentation. Findings from this study suggest that speaker sex does influence at least anterior dorsal stream activity in a similar fashion for both males and females, but task demands differentially alter anterior dorsal stream activity in each sex group. These findings may at least partially explain the high variability in findings across neuroimaging studies that feature males and females in the same population.
Themes: Speech Perception, Multisensory or Sensorimotor Integration
Method: Electrophysiology (MEG/EEG/ECOG)