The Cortical Contribution to the Speech‐Frequency–Following Response Is Not Modulated by Visual Information

Overview

Authors: Jasmin Riegel¹, Alina Schüller¹, Mike Thornton¹, Alexander Wißmann², Steffen Zeiler², Dorothea Kolossa², Tobias Reichenbach¹

Department Artificial Intelligence in Biomedical Engineering (AIBE), Friedrich‐Alexander‐Universität Erlangen‐Nürnberg (FAU), Erlangen, Germany
Human‐Centered Information Technologies, Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Journal: The European journal of neuroscience, volume 64, issue 5, article e70680

Dates: received 3 February 2026; accepted 1 September 2026; published online 8 September 2026; in print September 2026

Type: Research article · Language: English

License: CC BY

Identifiers: DOI · PMCID PMC13554471

Status: data only (how the code is found and verified)

Categories: cognitive (subfield)

Methods: Spectral & time-frequency, Preprocessing, Connectivity, Statistics, Machine learning, Evoked potentials, fMRI & imaging

Keywords: audiovisual speech perception, avatar, speech‐FFR, temporal response function

Citations: not cited yet (Europe PMC); 49 references in the paper

Abstract

Seeing a speaker's face can significantly aid understanding, particularly in challenging acoustic environments. An early neural response implicated in audiovisual speech processing is the frequency‐following response (speech‐FFR), which occurs at the fundamental frequency of the speech signal. This response arises from both subcortical areas and the auditory cortex. A previous study showed that subcortical responses to speech can be enhanced when a listener can see the talker's face. Here, we examined the cortical contribution to the speech‐FFR and its potential modulation by visual information, motivated in part by the growing use of artificially generated talking‐face avatars to support speech comprehension. We recorded MEG responses to four types of audiovisual signals: a still image, an artificially generated avatar, a degraded video, and a natural video. The audio stimuli were presented in a substantial level of background noise to make behavioral audiovisual effects stand out. Speech‐in‐noise comprehension increased significantly from the audio‐only condition to the avatar and the degraded video, and further to the natural video. Moreover, we found that all types of audiovisual stimuli yielded robust speech‐FFRs in the auditory cortex at an early latency of around 30 ms. However, the magnitude of this neural response was neither enhanced nor attenuated by the videos, nor could the cortical contribution of the speech‐FFR explain a significant portion of the variance in the behavioral comprehension scores. Our results suggest that visual modulation of the speech‐FFR in the auditory cortex is, if existent, too small to be measurable in scenarios where speech occurs in considerable background noise.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

Code

The paper links to its data and to no code of its authors: see the Data section.

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Data

Datasets cited

zenodo:18258659, at Zenodo; found in “Data Availability Statement”

Data Availability Statement

The data used in this study are available on Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/records/18258659.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

Versions

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Version 1, 27 September 2026: the first record

Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, issue, pages, dates, 7 authors, 4 keywords, 41 references.

Cite

This paper

Riegel, J., Schüller, A., Thornton, M., Wißmann, A., Zeiler, S., Kolossa, D., & Reichenbach, T. (2026). The Cortical Contribution to the Speech‐Frequency–Following Response Is Not Modulated by Visual Information. The European journal of neuroscience, 64(5), e70680.

BibTeX

@article{riegel2026cortical, author = {Riegel, Jasmin and Schüller, Alina and Thornton, Mike and Wißmann, Alexander and Zeiler, Steffen and Kolossa, Dorothea and Reichenbach, Tobias}, title = {{The Cortical Contribution to the Speech‐Frequency–Following Response Is Not Modulated by Visual Information}}, journal = {The European journal of neuroscience}, year = {2026}, month = sep, volume = {64}, number = {5}, pages = {e70680}, publisher = {Wiley}, issn = {0953-816X}, pmcid = {PMC13554471} }

RIS

TY - JOUR AU - Riegel, Jasmin AU - Schüller, Alina AU - Thornton, Mike AU - Wißmann, Alexander AU - Zeiler, Steffen AU - Kolossa, Dorothea AU - Reichenbach, Tobias TI - The Cortical Contribution to the Speech‐Frequency–Following Response Is Not Modulated by Visual Information T2 - The European journal of neuroscience J2 - Eur J Neurosci PY - 2026 DA - 2026/09/01 VL - 64 IS - 5 SP - e70680 SN - 0953-816X PB - Wiley LA - en ER -

CSL-JSON

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