Theta-gamma phase-amplitude coupling in auditory cortex is modulated by language proficiency

" Participants were Spanish native (L1) speakers studying Basque (L2) at three different levels: beginner (Grade 1), intermediate (Grade 2), and advanced (Grade 3). We found that during L2 speech processing (i) theta-gamma PAC [theta-gamma phase-amplitude coupling] was more highly coordinated for intelligible compared to unintelligible speech; (ii) this coupling was modulated by proficiency in Basque being lower for beginners, higher for intermediate, and highest for advanced speakers (no difference observed in Spanish); (iii) gamma power did not differ between languages and groups. These findings highlight how the coordinated theta-gamma oscillatory activity is tightly related to speech comprehension: the stronger this coordination is, the more the comprehension system will proficiently parse the incoming speech input." {Credits 1}

{Credits 1} 🎪 Lizarazu, M., Carreiras, M., & Molinaro, N. (2023). Theta‐gamma phase‐amplitude coupling in auditory cortex is modulated by language proficiency. Human brain mapping, 44(7), 2862-2872. © 2023 The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.