Somatosensory Function in Speech Perception

Overview

Journal Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

Specialty Science

Date 2009 Jan 24

PMID 19164569

Citations 83

Authors

Takayuki Ito

Mark Tiede

David J Ostry

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Somatosensory signals from the facial skin and muscles of the vocal tract provide a rich source of sensory input in speech production. We show here that the somatosensory system is also involved in the perception of speech. We use a robotic device to create patterns of facial skin deformation that would normally accompany speech production. We find that when we stretch the facial skin while people listen to words, it alters the sounds they hear. The systematic perceptual variation we observe in conjunction with speech-like patterns of skin stretch indicates that somatosensory inputs affect the neural processing of speech sounds and shows the involvement of the somatosensory system in the perceptual processing in speech.

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