Functional Organization of the Superior Temporal Gyrus for Speech Perception

The basic mechanisms underlying comprehension of spoken language are still largely unknown. Over the past decade, the study team has gained new insights to how the human brain extracts the most fundamental linguistic elements (consonants and vowels) from a complex and highly variable acoustic signal. However, the next set of questions await pertaining to the sequencing of those auditory elements and how they are integrated with other features, such as, the amplitude envelope of speech. Further investigation of the cortical representation of speech sounds can likely shed light on these fundamental questions. Previous research has implicated the superior temporal cortex in the processing of speech sounds, but little is known about how these sounds are linked together into the perceptual experience of words and continuous speech. The overall goal is to determine how the brain extracts linguistic elements from a complex acoustic speech signal towards better understanding and remediating human language disorders.

Study Overview

• Status: Enrolling by invitation
• Conditions: Epilepsy; Brain Tumor; Speech
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Speech Tasks

Detailed Description

Intracranial high-density electrodes make it possible to record neural activity directly from the brain surface with unparalleled spatial and temporal resolution to unravel both local and population encoding of speech sounds. This study proposes to assess speech perception in patients who are undergoing surgery for seizure localization or awake intraoperative brain mapping. Electrode placement is based on the clinical needs of each patient. The research study team will examine the mechanisms of phonetic encoding to reveal both the organization of auditory speech feature selectivity and the distributed population-level processing that give rise to the emergent properties of spoken language perception. The aims of this study seeks to determine the cortical encoding of phonological sequencing (Aim 1), representation of amplitude landmark coding in speech (Aim 2), and the shared and distinct mechanisms for speech and music melody encoding (Aim 3). Together, these aims will advance our understanding of speech encoding in the human brain beyond consonants and vowels, addressing questions pertaining to sequencing, amplitude coding, and auditory specialization. These results should heavily impact current theories of speech processing and, therefore, will have significant implications for understanding and remediating human language disorders.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Estimated): 60
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • California
    • San Francisco, California, United States, 94143
      • University of California, San Francisco

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years to 70 years (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Participants with epilepsy or brain tumors at UCSF undergoing surgical electrode implantation for seizure localization or awake intraoperative brain mapping for resection of brain tumors or epilepsy and
• Participants with electrodes implanted in at least two regions of interest who are willing and able to cooperate with study tasks.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Participants who lack capacity or decline to provide informed consent,
• Participants who have significant cerebral lesions or
• Participants with cognitive deficits that preclude reliable completion of study tasks.

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Basic Science
• Allocation: N/A
• Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

1

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Electrocorticography (ECoG) recording during Speech Tasks; Participants listened to 25-minute Speech Tasks while ECoG signals for neural activity was recorded during their intraoperative procedure or inpatient hospitalization at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).	Behavioral: Speech Tasks; Listen to 25-minutes of speech sounds in English.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Number of Participants with Electrocorticography (ECoG) Signals for Neural Activity Identified During Intraoperative Procedure or Inpatient Hospitalization	Number of participants with ECoG signals for neural activity identified during intraoperative procedure or inpatient hospitalization, between 10-30 minutes.	During Procedure

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: University of California, San Francisco
• Collaborators: University of California, Berkeley; National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Edward F Chang, MD, University of California, San Francisco

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): August 16, 2022
• Primary Completion (Estimated): July 31, 2027
• Study Completion (Estimated): July 31, 2027

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: June 22, 2022
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: June 22, 2022
• First Posted (Actual): June 28, 2022

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): June 8, 2025
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: June 4, 2025
• Last Verified: June 1, 2025

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Additional Relevant MeSH Terms: Brain Diseases; Central Nervous System Diseases; Nervous System Diseases; Neoplasms by Site; Neoplasms; Nervous System Neoplasms; Central Nervous System Neoplasms; Brain Neoplasms; Epilepsy
• Other Study ID Numbers: R01DC012379 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: NO

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No