Dissociable electrophysiological measures of natural language processing reveal differences in speech comprehension strategy in healthy ageing

Abstract Healthy ageing leads to changes in the brain that impact upon sensory and cognitive processing. It is not fully clear how these changes affect the processing of everyday spoken language. Prediction is thought to play an important role in language comprehension, where information about upcom...

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Autores principales:	Michael P. Broderick, Giovanni M. Di Liberto, Andrew J. Anderson, Adrià Rofes, Edmund C. Lalor
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Nature Portfolio 2021
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/d75fed7e430c45a49ba986de9f663e02
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:d75fed7e430c45a49ba986de9f663e022021-12-02T11:35:52ZDissociable electrophysiological measures of natural language processing reveal differences in speech comprehension strategy in healthy ageing10.1038/s41598-021-84597-92045-2322https://doaj.org/article/d75fed7e430c45a49ba986de9f663e022021-03-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-84597-9https://doaj.org/toc/2045-2322Abstract Healthy ageing leads to changes in the brain that impact upon sensory and cognitive processing. It is not fully clear how these changes affect the processing of everyday spoken language. Prediction is thought to play an important role in language comprehension, where information about upcoming words is pre-activated across multiple representational levels. However, evidence from electrophysiology suggests differences in how older and younger adults use context-based predictions, particularly at the level of semantic representation. We investigate these differences during natural speech comprehension by presenting older and younger subjects with continuous, narrative speech while recording their electroencephalogram. We use time-lagged linear regression to test how distinct computational measures of (1) semantic dissimilarity and (2) lexical surprisal are processed in the brains of both groups. Our results reveal dissociable neural correlates of these two measures that suggest differences in how younger and older adults successfully comprehend speech. Specifically, our results suggest that, while younger and older subjects both employ context-based lexical predictions, older subjects are significantly less likely to pre-activate the semantic features relating to upcoming words. Furthermore, across our group of older adults, we show that the weaker the neural signature of this semantic pre-activation mechanism, the lower a subject’s semantic verbal fluency score. We interpret these findings as prediction playing a generally reduced role at a semantic level in the brains of older listeners during speech comprehension and that these changes may be part of an overall strategy to successfully comprehend speech with reduced cognitive resources.Michael P. BroderickGiovanni M. Di LibertoAndrew J. AndersonAdrià RofesEdmund C. LalorNature PortfolioarticleMedicineRScienceQENScientific Reports, Vol 11, Iss 1, Pp 1-12 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Michael P. Broderick Giovanni M. Di Liberto Andrew J. Anderson Adrià Rofes Edmund C. Lalor Dissociable electrophysiological measures of natural language processing reveal differences in speech comprehension strategy in healthy ageing
description	Abstract Healthy ageing leads to changes in the brain that impact upon sensory and cognitive processing. It is not fully clear how these changes affect the processing of everyday spoken language. Prediction is thought to play an important role in language comprehension, where information about upcoming words is pre-activated across multiple representational levels. However, evidence from electrophysiology suggests differences in how older and younger adults use context-based predictions, particularly at the level of semantic representation. We investigate these differences during natural speech comprehension by presenting older and younger subjects with continuous, narrative speech while recording their electroencephalogram. We use time-lagged linear regression to test how distinct computational measures of (1) semantic dissimilarity and (2) lexical surprisal are processed in the brains of both groups. Our results reveal dissociable neural correlates of these two measures that suggest differences in how younger and older adults successfully comprehend speech. Specifically, our results suggest that, while younger and older subjects both employ context-based lexical predictions, older subjects are significantly less likely to pre-activate the semantic features relating to upcoming words. Furthermore, across our group of older adults, we show that the weaker the neural signature of this semantic pre-activation mechanism, the lower a subject’s semantic verbal fluency score. We interpret these findings as prediction playing a generally reduced role at a semantic level in the brains of older listeners during speech comprehension and that these changes may be part of an overall strategy to successfully comprehend speech with reduced cognitive resources.
format	article
author	Michael P. Broderick Giovanni M. Di Liberto Andrew J. Anderson Adrià Rofes Edmund C. Lalor
author_facet	Michael P. Broderick Giovanni M. Di Liberto Andrew J. Anderson Adrià Rofes Edmund C. Lalor
author_sort	Michael P. Broderick
title	Dissociable electrophysiological measures of natural language processing reveal differences in speech comprehension strategy in healthy ageing
title_short	Dissociable electrophysiological measures of natural language processing reveal differences in speech comprehension strategy in healthy ageing
title_full	Dissociable electrophysiological measures of natural language processing reveal differences in speech comprehension strategy in healthy ageing
title_fullStr	Dissociable electrophysiological measures of natural language processing reveal differences in speech comprehension strategy in healthy ageing
title_full_unstemmed	Dissociable electrophysiological measures of natural language processing reveal differences in speech comprehension strategy in healthy ageing
title_sort	dissociable electrophysiological measures of natural language processing reveal differences in speech comprehension strategy in healthy ageing
publisher	Nature Portfolio
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/d75fed7e430c45a49ba986de9f663e02
work_keys_str_mv	AT michaelpbroderick dissociableelectrophysiologicalmeasuresofnaturallanguageprocessingrevealdifferencesinspeechcomprehensionstrategyinhealthyageing AT giovannimdiliberto dissociableelectrophysiologicalmeasuresofnaturallanguageprocessingrevealdifferencesinspeechcomprehensionstrategyinhealthyageing AT andrewjanderson dissociableelectrophysiologicalmeasuresofnaturallanguageprocessingrevealdifferencesinspeechcomprehensionstrategyinhealthyageing AT adriarofes dissociableelectrophysiologicalmeasuresofnaturallanguageprocessingrevealdifferencesinspeechcomprehensionstrategyinhealthyageing AT edmundclalor dissociableelectrophysiologicalmeasuresofnaturallanguageprocessingrevealdifferencesinspeechcomprehensionstrategyinhealthyageing
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Dissociable electrophysiological measures of natural language processing reveal differences in speech comprehension strategy in healthy ageing

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