Attention-dependent preparatory processing of naturalistic narratives is correlated with speech comprehension

Abstract

While human speech comprehension is thought to be an active process that involves top-down predictions, it remains unclear how predictive information is used to prepare for the processing of upcoming speech information. We aimed to identify the neural signatures of the preparatory processing of upcoming speech. Participants selectively attended to one of two competing naturalistic, narrative speech streams, and a temporal response function (TRF) method was applied to derive event-related-like neural responses from electroencephalographic data. The phase responses to the attended speech at the delta band (1-4 Hz) were correlated with the comprehension performance of individual participants, with a latency of -200-0 ms before onset over the fronto-central and left-lateralized parietal regions. The phase responses to the attended speech at the alpha band also correlated with comprehension performance, but with a latency of 650-980 ms post-onset over fronto-central regions. Distinct neural signatures were found for the attentional modulation, taking the form of TRF-based amplitude responses at a latency of 240-320 ms post-onset over the left-lateralized fronto-central and occipital regions. Our findings reveal how the brain gets prepared to process an upcoming speech in a continuous, naturalistic speech context.