The recognition of spoken language has typically been studied by focusing on either words or their constituent elements (for example, low-level features or phonemes). More recently, the 'temporal mesoscale' of speech has been explored, specifically regularities in the envelope of the acoustic signal that correlate with syllabic information and that play a central role in production and perception processes. The temporal structure of speech at this scale is remarkably stable across languages, with a preferred range of rhythmicity of 2- 8 Hz. Importantly, this rhythmicity is required by the processes underlying the construction of intelligible speech. A lot of current work focuses on audio-motor interactions in speech, highlighting behavioural and neural evidence that demonstrates how properties of perceptual and motor systems, and their relation, can underlie the mesoscale speech rhythms. The data invite the hypothesis that the speech motor cortex is best modelled as a neural oscillator, a conjecture that aligns well with current proposals highlighting the fundamental role of neural oscillations in perception and cognition. The findings also show motor theories (of speech) in a different light, placing new mechanistic constraints on accounts of the action-perception interface.

中文翻译：

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语音节律及其神经基础。

口语识别通常是通过研究单词或它们的组成元素（例如，低级功能或音素）来进行的。最近，人们研究了语音的“时间中尺度”，特别是声音信号包络中与音节信息相关的规则性，并且在产生和感知过程中起着核心作用。这种规模的语音时间结构在所有语言中都非常稳定，节奏的最佳范围为2-8 Hz。重要的是，这种可节奏性是可理解语音的构建过程所必需的。当前的许多工作着眼于语音中的音频-运动交互，着重强调了行为和神经证据，这些证据证明了感知和运动系统的特性，以及它们之间的关系可以成为中尺度语音节奏的基础。数据提出了这样一个假说，即语音运动皮层最好被建模为神经振荡器，这一推测与当前的建议非常吻合，突出了神经振荡在感知和认知中的基本作用。研究结果还以不同的角度展示了运动理论（言语），将新的机械约束置于动作-感知界面的考虑之下。