Researchers discover part of brain that processes speech rhythm

DURHAM, N.C., May 18 (UPI) -- Researchers at Duke University have discovered the region of the brain that processes the rhythms of speech, allowing them to understand better exactly the way that individual bits of sound are understood.

Using bits of foreign language speech, the research team used a computer algorithm to chop up and rearrange the sounds. They had already theorized that the superior temporal sulcus, or STS, would handle the larger snippets of sound -- which is exactly what happened during testing.

"We really went to great lengths to be certain that the effect we were seeing in STS was due to speech-specific processing and not due to some other explanation, for example, pitch in the sound or it being a natural sound as opposed to some computer-generated sound," Tobias Overath, an assistant research professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke, said in a press release.

In verifying brain activity they saw, researchers also used parts of environmental sound and sounds which mimicked speech, but wasn't actual language. The difference in reaction of the STS to each different sound indicated that the timing and rhythm of sounds affect the way the brain processes them.

The research team plans to next begin using speech with lingual meaning in order to gauge the way the STS helps the brain to process sounds while understanding them as more than just noise.

The study is published in Nature Neuroscience.