Functional network connectivity to enhance speech perception performance: A preliminary fMRI study

摘要

Even though previous studies have reported that functional network connectivity (FNC: functional connectivity between functional networks) was related with cognitive process, there was no study to investigate FNC during the speech hearing. In this study, therefore, the FNC was investigated to identify which functional networks interact during speech hearing. To this end, the English sentences as auditory stimuli were presented to each participant. And, speech hearing (SH) accuracy was estimated during the experimental task. As results, the FNC between motor network (e.g., left precentral gyrus) and auditory network (e.g., bilateral superior temporal gyrus) showed significant correlation with the SH accuracy in the task-based scan. Furthermore, the FNC in task-based scan was more tightly linked with the SH accuracy compared to resting-state scan. These results possibly indicate that the identified FNC was associated with speech hearing performance.