Dynamical theories of speech processing propose that the auditory cortex parses acoustic information in parallel at the syllabic and phonemic timescales. We developed a paradigm to independently manipulate both linguistic timescales, and acquired intracranial recordings from 11 patients who are epileptic listening to French sentences. Our results indicate that (i) syllabic and phonemic timescales are both reflected in the acoustic spectral flux; (ii) during comprehension, the auditory cortex tracks the syllabic timescale in the theta range, while neural activity in the alpha-beta range phase locks to the phonemic timescale; (iii) these neural dynamics occur simultaneously and share a joint spatial location; (iv) the spectral flux embeds two timescales—in the theta and low-beta ranges—across 17 natural languages. These findings help us understand how the human brain extracts acoustic information from the continuous speech signal at multiple timescales simultaneously, a prerequisite for subsequent linguistic processing.

中文翻译：

---

人类听觉皮层通过声谱通量同时跟踪音节和音素时间尺度


语音处理的动力学理论提出，听觉皮层在音节和音素时间尺度上并行解析声学信息。我们开发了一种范式来独立操纵语言时间尺度，并从 11 名癫痫患者那里获取了听法语句子的颅内记录。我们的结果表明：（i） 音节和音素时间尺度都反映在声谱通量中;（ii） 在理解过程中，听觉皮层跟踪 θ 范围内的音节时间尺度，而 alpha-β 范围内的神经活动阶段锁定在音素时间尺度上;（iii） 这些神经动力学同时发生并共享一个共同的空间位置;（iv） Spectral Flux 嵌入了 17 种自然语言的两个时间尺度——在 theta 和低 beta 范围内。这些发现有助于我们了解人脑如何在多个时间尺度上同时从连续语音信号中提取声学信息，这是后续语言处理的先决条件。