Neural control of lexical tone production in human laryngeal motor cortex

This study investigated the neural basis of lexical tone production in Mandarin speakers using high-density direct cortical recordings. Researchers found that local populations in the bilateral laryngeal motor cortex (LMC) encode articulatory kinematic information to generate pitch dynamics, rather than tone category-selective coding. A computational model identified two distinct patterns of LMC activity for pitch rising and lowering, confirmed by direct electrocortical stimulation which evoked corresponding pitch changes. This reveals the neural basis of vocal pitch control for lexical tones.

Junfeng Lu, Yuanning Li, Zehao Zhao, Yan Liu, Yanming Zhu, Ying Mao, Jinsong Wu, Edward F. Chang