Using the RUPEX Multichannel Corpus in a Pilot fMRI Study on Speech Disfluencies
In modern linguistics and psycholinguistics speech disfluencies in real fluent speech are a well-known phenomenon. But it{'}s not still clear which components of brain systems are involved into its comprehension in a listener{'}s brain. In this paper we provide a pilot neuroimaging study of the possible neural correlates of speech disfluencies perception, using a combination of the corpus and functional magnetic-resonance imaging (fMRI) methods. Special technical procedure of selecting stimulus material from Russian multichannel corpus RUPEX allowed to create fragments in terms of requirements for the fMRI BOLD temporal resolution. They contain isolated speech disfluencies and their clusters. Also, we used the referential task for participants fMRI scanning. As a result, it was demonstrated that annotated multichannel corpora like RUPEX can be an important resource for experimental research in interdisciplinary fields. Thus, different aspects of communication can be explored through the prism of brain activation.
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