Biology subjects

Jobst, C.

Publications and source records attributed to Jobst, C..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2020

Concurrent MEG-articulography for investigating neuromotor control of speech articulation

Articulography and functional neuroimaging are two major tools for studying the neurobiology of speech production. Until now, however, it has generally not been possible to use both in the same experimental setup because of technical incompatibilities between the two methodologies. Here we describe results from a novel articulography system dubbed Magneto-articulography for the Assessment of Speech Kinematics (MASK), used for the first time to obtain kinematic profiles of oro-facial movements during speech together with concurrent magnetoencephalographic (MEG) measurements of neuromotor brain activity. MASK was used to characterise speech kinematics in a healthy adult, and the results were compared to measurements from the same participant with a conventional electromagnetic articulography (EMA) setup. We also characterised speech movement kinematics with MASK in a group of ten typically developing children, aged 8-12 years. Analyses targeted the gestural landmarks of the utterances /ida/, /ila/ and reiterated productions of /pataka/. These results demonstrate that the MASK technique can be used to reliably characterise movement profiles and kinematic parameters that reflect development of speech motor control, together with MEG measurements of brain responses from speech sensorimotor cortex. This new capability sets the stage for cross-disciplinary efforts to understand the developmental neurobiology of human speech production.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

Developmental Changes in Movement Related Brain Activity in Early Childhood

In a previous MEG study of movement-related brain activity in preschool age children, we reported that pre-movement fields and sensorimotor cortex oscillations differed from those typically observed in adults, suggesting that maturation of cortical motor networks is still incomplete by late preschool age (Cheyne et al., 2014). Here we describe the same measurements in an older group of school-aged children (6 to 8 years old) and an adult control group, in addition to repeated recordings in seven children from the original study approximately two years later. Differences were observed both longitudinally within children and between age groups. Pre-movement (readiness) fields were still not present in the oldest children, however both frequency and magnitude of movement-related mu (8-12Hz) and beta (15-30Hz) oscillations demonstrated linear increases with age. In contrast, movement-evoked gamma synchronization demonstrated a step-like transition from low (30-50 Hz) to high (70-90 Hz) narrow-band oscillations, and this occurred at different ages in different children. These data provide novel evidence of linear and non-linear changes in motor cortex oscillations and delayed development of the readiness field throughout early childhood. Individual children showed large differences in maturation of movement-related brain activity, possibly reflecting differing rates of motor development.

neuroscience↗