DATA ANALYSIS OF ELECTROCORTICOGRAPHY SIGNALS TO EXPLORE SPEECH PERCEPTION AND PRODUCTION

• Grant number: 25/00861-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: June 15, 2025
• End date: October 14, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Interdisciplinary Subjects
• Principal Investigator: Shigeru Miyagawa
• Grantee: Patricia Silva de Camargo
• Supervisor: Adeen Flinker
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biociências (IB). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: New York University, United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 23/17520-9 - The neurophysiology of syntactic structure building, BP.PD

Abstract

Speech production and perception are uniquely human characteristics that developed throughout the evolutionary process. Previous research has identified several brain areas involved in phrase structure grammar, mostly using non-invasive methods such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG). While fMRI offers a high spatial resolution, it has limited temporal resolution, whereas EEG provides excellent temporal and moderate spatial resolution. An invasive technique known as electrocorticography (ECoG) is often employed in rare neurosurgical cases, particularly for patients undergoing treatment for refractory epilepsy. ECoG offers neural signals with combined high spatial and temporal resolution, making it a valuable tool for studying neural activity during language processing.The current project aims to analyze electrocorticography (ECoG) signals collected directly from the human cortex during brain surgeries. Dr. Adeen Flinker's laboratory maintains a comprehensive database for this analysis, with a research focus on utilizing a variety of experimental, machine learning, and signal processing approaches to elucidate speech networks based on neural signals recorded from the human cortex. This research analysis will be particularly significant for mapping language-related brain areas during brain surgeries in Brazil. Our approach will be two-fold: we will analyze the existing data from the database, and, as a long-term aim, we will design and implement a new linguistic experiment to be tested in Brazil.