Entrainment, segmentation, and decoding: three necessary computations for speech comprehension

David Poeppel, Max-Planck-Institute and NYU

Abstract: Neurophysiological experiments demonstrate that auditory cortical activity entrains to continuous speech. This entrainment, building on neural oscillations, underlies segmentation, and the segmented chunks in turn form the basis for decoding. To make contact with the stored representations (roughly, words) that form the basis of recognition, these operations are all necessary.