What's the point of talking? Auditory targets and communicative goals

Event details

Speaker(s): Dr. Sophie Meekings

How does your brain control your voice? It's difficult to fit two people in an MRI scanner, so researchers attempting to localise the brain basis of speech production have mostly studied people reading aloud on their own. This work has given us neural models of speech production that really excellently explain the processes involved in solo vocalisation, and can also help us begin to understand motor speech disorders such as stuttering. But of course, day-to-day speech looks quite different-- people usually talk to each other rather than themselves. How does the presence of a conversational partner change things? This talk will outline some of my work on solo and conversational speech in both typical speakers and people who stutter, how this might be incorporated into neural models of solo speech, and how I am using fNIRS (functional near-infrared spectroscopy) to find out more.