Attentional modulation of the cortical contribution to the frequency-following response evoked by continuous speech.

Selective attention to one of several competing speakers is required for comprehending a target speaker amongst other voices and for successful communication with them. It moreover has been found to involve the neural tracking of low-frequency speech rhythms in the auditory cortex. Effects of selective attention have also been found in subcortical neural activities, in particular regarding the high-frequency neural response at the fundamental frequency of speech, the speech-FFR. Recent investigations have, however, shown that the speech-FFR contains cortical contributions as well. It remains unclear whether these are also modulated by selective attention. Here we employed magnetoencephalography (MEG) to assess the attentional modulation of the cortical contributions to the speech-FFR. We presented both male and female participants with two competing speech signals and analyzed the cortical responses during attentional switching between the two speakers. Our findings revealed robust attentional modulation of the cortical contribution to the speech-FFR: the neural responses were higher when the speaker was attended than when they were ignored. We also found that, regardless of attention, a voice with a lower fundamental frequency elicited a larger cortical contribution to the speech-FFR than a voice with a higher fundamental frequency. Our results show that the attentional modulation of the speech-FFR does not only occur subcortically but extends to the auditory cortex as well. Significance Statement Understanding speech in noise requires attention to a target speaker. One of the speech features that a listener can employ to identify a target voice amongst others and attend it is the fundamental frequency, together with its higher harmonics. The fundamental frequency arises from the opening and closing of the vocal folds and is tracked by high-frequency neural activity in the auditory brainstem and in the cortex. Previous investigations showed that the subcortical neural tracking is modulated by selective attention. Here we show that attention affects the cortical tracking of the fundamental frequency as well: it is stronger when a particular voice is attended than when it is ignored.