CIBR seminar Mon 23.4.2018: Postdoctoral researcher Anna Maria Alexandrou, Aalto University

CIBR is happy to have  Postdoctoral researcher Anna Maria Alexandrou to give a talk at CIBR seminar.  The talk is titled "Neurophysiological correlates of speech production and perception: is natural connected speech special?"

Date: Monday 23.4.2018 at 14:00 - 15:00

Place: Agora Delta

Dr.  Alexandrou is currently a postdoctoral researcher in Aalto University, Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering. As part of the Imaging Language research group led by Professor Riitta Salmelin, she is interested in how the brain supports oral communication. Her doctoral dissertation "Neurophysiological correlates of producing and perceiving natural connected speech" employed a naturalistic experimental paradigm and examined how humans are able to generate and comprehend speech in every-day social situation. Naturalistic experimental paradigms are becoming increasingly common in neuroscience as they offer the opportunity to obtain a a faithful view of cortical function in our sensory and social environment. Understanding the cortical correlates of language has the potential to advance our understanding of speech-related pathologies and subsequently aid in designing appropriate interventions. The Alfred Kordelin Foundation and the Emil Aaltonen Foundation have provided support for this work.

ABSTRACT "Neurophysiological correlates of speech production and perception: is natural connected speech special?":

The current view of cortical speech processing is primarily based on studies of the production and perception of single words or sentences. Remarkably little is known about the cortical correlates of natural, connected speech, as we encounter it in real life. In this talk, I will present magnetoencephalographic evidence that natural connected speech engages additional cortical substrates compared to isolated linguistic forms. Specifically, I will show evidence that the right hemisphere is involved in the production and perception of natural connected speech and that also higher-order cortical regions track incoming speech signals. I will also demonstrate findings suggesting that the characterization of the temporal regularities in natural connected speech (speech rhythm) requires a special multimodal computational approach.