Abstract
During face-to-face communication, the perception and recognition of facial movements can facilitate individuals' understanding of what is said. Facial movements are a form of complex biological motion. Separate neural pathways are thought to processing (1) simple, nonbiological motion with an obligatory waypoint in the motion-sensitive visual middle temporal area (V5/MT); and (2) complex biological motion. Here, we present findings that challenge this dichotomy. Neuronavigated offline transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over V5/MT on 24 participants (17 females and 7 males) led to increased response times in the recognition of simple, nonbiological motion as well as visual speech recognition compared with TMS over the vertex, an active control region. TMS of area V5/MT also reduced practice effects on response times, that are typically observed in both visual speech and motion recognition tasks over time. Our findings provide the first indication that area V5/MT causally influences the recognition of visual speech.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT In everyday face-to-face communication, speech comprehension is often facilitated by viewing a speaker's facial movements. Several brain areas contribute to the recognition of visual speech. One area of interest is the motion-sensitive visual medial temporal area (V5/MT), which has been associated with the perception of simple, nonbiological motion such as moving dots, as well as more complex, biological motion such as visual speech. Here, we demonstrate using noninvasive brain stimulation that area V5/MT is causally relevant in recognizing visual speech. This finding provides new insights into the neural mechanisms that support the perception of human communication signals, which will help guide future research in typically developed individuals and populations with communication difficulties.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 7690-7699 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Journal of Neuroscience |
Volume | 43 |
Issue number | 45 |
Early online date | 8 Nov 2023 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 8 Nov 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:? Acknowledgements: The study was funded by the ERC-Consolidator Grant Sensocom
Funding Information:
The study was funded by the ERC-Consolidator Grant Sensocom 647051 to KvK. LJ is also supported by the DFG Grant 178833530 (CRC-940). Special thanks to Moana Beyer and Kira Eckert for their help with organizing and conducting the experiments.
Keywords
- Male
- Female
- Humans
- Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
- Motion Perception/physiology
- Speech
- Speech Perception
- Visual Cortex/physiology
- Photic Stimulation