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Combining MEG with Real-Time Measures of Articulation to Examine Motor Sequencing in Speech and Nonspeech Tasks

Poster Session B - Sunday, March 8, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Ioanna Anastasopoulou¹ (), Cecilia Jobst¹, Gloria Lai¹, Silvia Isabella², Douglas Cheyne^1,2,3; ¹The Hospital for Sick Children,Peter Gilgan Centre for Research and Learning, ²Baycrest Academy for Research and Education, Baycrest, Toronto, ON, Canada, ³Institute of Biomedical Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

We recently developed an MEG-compatible motion tracking system (MASK) capable of acquiring precise 3-dimensional kinematic data during speech and oromotor movements simultaneously with neuromagnetic brain activity [1,2]. To examine differences in brain activation during speech versus nonspeech movements ten healthy adults performed overt speech movements (disyllabic nonwords, /ipa/, /pataka/) and non-speech movements (smile, pucker lips, tongue protrusion) of increasing sequencing complexity. These tasks required participants to organize simple and complex motor movement sequences, allowing us to examine how sequencing demands influence brain function and activation across speech and nonspeech actions. Speech and mouth kinematics were tracked simultaneously with 275-channel MEG recordings (CTF Systems, Canada) from the upper and lower lip and the tongue body, tip and dorsum to measure formation of vowels (/a/, /i/) and consonants (/t/, /k/), respectively, in addition to the acoustic speech signal. Source analysis showed left lateralized suppression of beta band (15-30Hz) activity during speech tasks in a region of the mid-precentral gyrus associated with speech motor sequencing [3]. In contrast, non-speech movements were associated with bilateral suppression of motor cortex. These preliminary results demonstrate the ability to measure time-locked brain responses and speech kinematics during overt speech tasks demonstrating the role of specific regions of the motor cortex in speech motor control.

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