Neural dynamics during the vocalization of ‘uh’ or ‘um’

• Published in: Scientific Reports Vol. 10; no. 1; p. 11987
• Main Authors: Sugiura, Ayaka, Alqatan, Zahraa, Nakai, Yasuo, Kambara, Toshimune, Silverstein, Brian H., Asano, Eishi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Springer Science and Business Media LLC 20.07.2020; Nature Publishing Group UK; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 631/378; 692/617; Adolescent; Behavior; Brain; Brain - physiology; Cognitive ability; Communication; Drug resistance; Electrodes; Epilepsy; Female; Frequency analysis; Gamma Rhythm; Gamma Rhythm - physiology; Hospitals; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; Hypotheses; Information processing; Language; Male; Memory; Models, Neurological; multidisciplinary; Patients; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Short term memory; Task Performance and Analysis; Time Factors; Visual cortex
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-68606-x

People occasionally use filler phrases or pauses, such as “uh”, “um”, or “y’know,” that interrupt the flow of a sentence and fill silent moments between ordinary (non-filler) phrases. It remains unknown which brain networks are engaged during the utterance of fillers. We addressed this question by quantifying event-related cortical high gamma activity at 70–110 Hz. During extraoperative electrocorticography recordings performed as part of the presurgical evaluation, patients with drug-resistant focal epilepsy were instructed to overtly explain, in a sentence, ‘ what is in the image (subject)’, ‘ doing what (verb)’, ‘ where (location)’, and ‘ when (time)’. Time–frequency analysis revealed that the utterance of fillers, compared to that of ordinary words, was associated with a greater magnitude of high gamma augmentation in association and visual cortex of either hemisphere. Our preliminary results raise the hypothesis that filler utterance would often occur when large-scale networks across the association and visual cortex are engaged in cognitive processing, including lexical retrieval as well as verbal working memory and visual scene scanning.