Cortical evoked response to acoustic change within a syllable

Objective: To investigate whether the evoked potential to a complex naturally produced speech syllable could be decomposed to reflect the contributions of the acoustic events contained in the constituent phonemes. Design: Auditory cortical evoked potentials N1 and P2 were obtained in eight adults with normal hearing. Three naturally produced speech stimuli were used: 1) the syllable [sei]; 2) the sibilant [s], extracted from the syllable; 3) the vowel [ei] extracted from the syllable. The isolated sibilant and vowel preserved the same time relationships to the sampling window as they did in the complete syllable. Evoked potentials were collected at Fz, Ct, Pt, Al, and A2, referenced to the nose. Results: In the group mean waveforms, clear responses were observed to both the sibilant and the isolated vowel. Although the response to the [s] was weaker than that to [ei], both had N1 and P2 components with latencies, in relation to sound onset, appropriate to cortical onset potentials. The vowel onset response was preserved in the response to the complete syllable, though with reduced amplitude. This pattern was observable in six of the eight waveforms from individual subjects. Conclusions: It seems likely that the response to [ei] within the complete syllable reflects changes of cortical activation caused by amplitude or spectral change at the transition from consonant to vowel. The change from aperiodic to periodic stimulation may also produce changes in cortical activation that contribute to the observed response. Whatever the mechanism, the important conclusion is that the auditory cortical evoked potential to complex, time-varying speech waveforms can reflect features of the underlying acoustic patterns. Such potentials may have value in the evaluation of speech perception capacity in young hearing-impaired children.