An Approach to Simultaneous Acquisition of Real-Time MRI Video, EEG, and Surface EMG for Articulatory, Brain, and Muscle Activity During Speech Production
This work provides a novel multimodal acquisition paradigm for speech neuroscience, offering an unprecedented window into the underlying neurophysiological substrates of speech production.
The paper presents the first simultaneous acquisition of real-time MRI, EEG, and surface EMG to capture brain signals, muscle activations, and articulatory movements during speech production. They also introduce an artifact suppression pipeline to mitigate MRI-induced electromagnetic interference and myogenic artifacts.
Speech production is a complex process spanning neural planning, motor control, muscle activation, and articulatory kinematics. While the acoustic speech signal is the most accessible product of the speech production act, it does not directly reveal its causal neurophysiological substrates. We present the first simultaneous acquisition of real-time (dynamic) MRI, EEG, and surface EMG, capturing several key aspects of the speech production chain: brain signals, muscle activations, and articulatory movements. This multimodal acquisition paradigm presents substantial technical challenges, including MRI-induced electromagnetic interference and myogenic artifacts. To mitigate these, we introduce an artifact suppression pipeline tailored to this tri-modal setting. Once fully developed, this framework is poised to offer an unprecedented window into speech neuroscience and insights leading to brain-computer interface advances.