Neuropsychologia

Humanity has always admired and created artwork, but the neurocognitive mechanisms behind artistic experience are still elusive. Professional artists and their intimate relationship with their artworks provide a unique opportunity to study the nature of art experience due to their expertise in both art making and art appreciation. During two fMRI tasks, professional artists (N=20) made aesthetic judgments on their own and other artists paintings (aesthetic appreciation task); they also mentally reconstructed the moments when they conceived their artworks or, as a control condition, when they visited now-familiar places for the first time (reconstruction by imagery task). During art appreciation of their own (as compared to other artists) paintings, participants showed stronger recruitment of bilateral posterior parietal cortices, the left lateral occipitotemporal cortex, and the dorso-central sector of the right insula, that is, action-related brain regions also involved in encoding the emotional components of movements. The reconstruction of their own artistic creation (as compared to episodic memory retrieval) involved the left fronto-parietal network associated with motor cognition. Altogether, these results suggest that the mental representations of the actions involved in creating art are integral to the overall artistic experience of painters, supporting an embodied view of the artists experience of art.

Spatialization in working memory refers to the spatial coding of non-spatial information along a mental horizontal line when encoding verbal material. This phenomenon is thought to support working memory by facilitating order encoding. Although it has been observed for both visually and auditorily presented stimuli, no direct comparison has yet examined whether these modalities rely on similar neural mechanisms. In this study, we investigated whether spatialization in visual and auditory modalities involves shared or distinct patterns of activity within the working-memory network. Forty-nine participants performed both a visual and an auditory working memory SPoARC task of the same verbal material, allowing to study the cortical patterns associated with distinct serial positions at both encoding and recognition across sensory modalities. Whole-brain analyses revealed similar frontoparietal networks across conditions. In addition, a representational similarity analysis (RSA) was conducted to assess the similarity of neural patterns between early and late serial positions in a sequence and across sensory modalities. This multivoxel pattern analysis revealed modality-dependent patterns distinguishing early and late positions in the inferior frontal gyrus. Additional modality-specific effects were observed in the anterior intraparietal sulcus in the visual modality and in the posterior hippocampus in the auditory modality. Drawing on the framework proposed by Bottini & Doeller (2020), we propose that order decoding in the IPS might reflect a low-dimensional spatial coding of order (e.g., along a horizontal axis), whereas order decoding in the hippocampus might reflect higher-dimensional spatial representations or temporal representations.

Impaired reading, i.e., alexia, is common after left hemisphere stroke. The most common deficit in alexia is a difficulty reading aloud pronounceable novel words, also called pseudowords. While semantic and phonological processes both subserve reading real words, pseudoword reading deficits in alexia are typically ascribed to phonological deficits alone. Some theories, however, suggest that pseudoword reading relies in part on lexical-semantic knowledge, such that semantic deficits could also contribute to poor pseudoword reading in alexia. Leveraging a large sample of left-hemisphere stroke survivors, we examine the cognitive and neural substrates of pseudoword reading accuracy and two error types: lexicalization errors, where a pseudoword is incorrectly read as a real word, and nonword errors, where a pseudoword is read as an incorrect nonword. 76 left-hemisphere stroke survivors read 60 pseudowords aloud, and performed two pseudoword repetition tasks to assess phonological processing and two picture naming tasks to assess mappings between lexical semantics and phonology. Regression models assessed how pseudoword repetition and naming related to overall accuracy and rates of lexicalization and nonword errors in pseudoword reading. Voxel-based and connectome lesion-symptom mapping localized the neural territory responsible for these errors. Both pseudoword repetition and naming independently related to pseudoword reading accuracy. Pseudoword repetition but not naming deficits predicted higher rates of lexicalization errors, while naming but not pseudoword repetition deficits predicted higher rates of nonword errors. Greater nonword error rate also predicted smaller imageability effects in real word reading (t(71)=-3.2, p=0.002). Lexicalization errors were associated with lesions to and disconnections of the left putamen and basal ganglia. Nonword errors were associated with lesions to the superior and middle temporal gyri, as well as broad temporo-parietal disconnections, overlapping with previous lesion-mapping results implicating these regions in semantic contributions to word reading. These results suggest that lexicalization errors result from impaired planning and execution of novel motor plans, causing a reliance on the well-learned motor plans associated with lexical items. In contrast, greater rates of nonword errors, relative to lexicalization errors, occur when semantic contributions to reading are impaired. Overall, these findings demonstrate that semantic processes are involved in reading pseudowords, at least in stroke alexia. These findings support connectionist accounts of reading in which damage in the direct orthography to phonology route for reading leads to reliance on semantic representations, even for pseudowords, suggesting a reinterpretation of pseudoword reading as a pure measure of phonological reading deficits.

Prior studies in bilinguals have reported relationships between brain structure and the dimensions of (i) language proficiency or (ii) language balance (the discrepancy between a bilinguals two proficiencies), but rarely both, even though they are highly related. These studies were often conducted in late bilinguals and the analyses limited to regions of interest. Here, we tested for relationships between brain structure and these two dimensions in 46 early cultural Spanish-English bilinguals (mean age = 16.7 years) at the level of the whole brain for gray matter volume (GMV) and cortical thickness (CT). Results revealed a positive association between GMV and proficiency in the weaker language in the right angular gyrus (AG; BA 39) extending into the superior temporal gyrus (BA 22). More balanced bilingualism was also associated with more GMV in the AG (BA 39), in addition to less GMV in left postcentral gyrus (BA 1), right cerebellum lobule IX and right superior occipital gyrus (BA 18). However, these relationships between GMV and balance disappeared after controlling for language proficiency. No significant associations were observed for CT and these two dimensions of language. Our findings suggest that relationships between GMV and balance are driven by language proficiency, and that the relationship between GMV and language proficiency likely does not involve language-specific mechanisms, given the location of the association is in the right inferior parietal cortex. Together, this study separates the neuroanatomical bases of these two language dimensions and places them in brain regions outside those usually targeted in prior studies. HighlightsO_LINeuroanatomy was correlated with proficiencies in early Spanish-English bilinguals C_LIO_LIRight angular gyrus gray matter volume (GMV) was positively related to proficiency C_LIO_LIGMV was positively related to balance, but not after controlling for proficiency C_LIO_LIRelations with these language dimensions are located outside of language cortex C_LIO_LINo significant associations were observed for cortical thickness C_LI

People frequently gesture while speaking, even when listeners cannot see them--for instance, during phone calls or behind barriers. Congenitally blind individuals also gesture, indicating that gestures serve functions beyond visual communication. Previous models of gesture production (e.g., Kita & Ozyurek, 2003; Rauscher et al., 1996) suggest that gestures facilitate speech, but they rely heavily on behavioural data and provide limited insight into temporal dynamics. This study used magnetoencephalography (MEG), a neuroimaging technique with high temporal resolution, to investigate when gestures influence speech. Twenty-three native Japanese speakers took part in a storytelling task under two conditions: Gesture-Required (gesture use instructed) and Gesture-Prohibited (hands kept still). Participants described cartoon clips across multiple sessions (30 trials x 3 sessions per condition). Using speech onset as the reference point, we compared root mean square (RMS) values within a -0.25 to 0 second window. RMS values were higher in the Gesture-Prohibited condition, with increased activity in the bilateral anterior temporal lobes (Left ATL: p = .049; Right ATL: p = .027), but not in motor regions (p = .29). These findings suggest that gestures reduce neural load in language-related regions before articulation. Co-speech gestures may support speech planning by facilitating lexical retrieval or semantic structuring. The lack of motor region effects indicates that this influence is linguistic rather than motoric. This study provides direct direct neurophysiological evidence of the timing of gesture-speech interaction, supporting models that view gestures as an integral part of speech production.

Previous research has demonstrated that children exhibit superior - as compared to adults - consolidation of newly acquired motor sequences across post-learning periods of wakefulness. Given that consolidation is thought to be supported by the reactivation of learning-related patterns of brain activity during the rest periods following active task practice, we hypothesized that the childhood advantage in offline consolidation may be linked to greater reactivation during post-learning wakefulness. Twenty-two children (7-11 years) and 23 adults (18-30 years) completed two sessions of a motor sequence learning task, separated by a 5-hour wake interval. Multivoxel analyses of task-related and resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data were employed to assess the persistence of learning-related patterns of neural activity into post-task rest epochs, reflective of reactivation processes. Behavioral results demonstrated the previously reported childhood advantage in offline consolidation over a post-learning wake interval. Imaging results revealed that children exhibited greater persistence of task-related hippocampal - but not putaminal - activity into post-learning rest as compared to adults. These findings suggest that the childhood advantage in awake motor memory consolidation may be supported, at least partially, by enhanced reactivation of task-dependent hippocampal activity patterns during offline epochs.

Mental rotation in 3D is a key cognitive skill involving dynamic spatial transformations, for which pronounced individual differences have been documented. Here we ask whether individual differences in 3D abilities can be explained by analogous differences in 2D abilities. 3D mental-rotation was assessed by the Vandenberg & Kruse Mental Rotation Test (3D-MRT) and examined for association with performance and underlying electrocortical mechanisms during a 2D letter rotation task. Participants (N=40) first completed the MRT and then performed a computerized 2-D letter rotation task in which they had to identify whether letters were oriented in a standard or a mirrored direction (parity judgment) when rotated at 0{degrees}, 60{degrees}, 120{degrees}, and 180{degrees} while EEG was recorded. Reaction times (RTs) and error rates increased with angular disparity. The angular disparity effect on RT was smaller for mirrored letters. Low, relative to high, 3D-MRT scoring participants showed more pronounced accuracy declines at higher rotation angles. An EEG Event Related Potential (ERP) known as the Rotation-Related Negativity (RRN) became more pronounced with increasing angular disparity. High 3D-MRT scores were associated with a stronger RRN response at central-parietal sites. In addition, the ERP-P3b wave was more pronounced at central-parietal sites for low 3D-MRT scorers, independent of angular disparity. It is concluded that 3D rotational ability is positively associated with 2D mental rotation performance, and more strongly with enhanced recruitment of neural visual-spatial cortical representations than with enhanced recruitment of more general cognitive resources.

Verbal fluency is a behavioral task that requires the generation of words from a semantic category (category fluency) or words beginning with a specific letter (letter fluency). Although word production engages a frontal-temporal-parietal network, no studies have tested how lesions to temporal and parietal lobe areas that represent semantic and phonological knowledge dampen neural responses in the left pars triangularis and the left pars opercularis, two adjacent regions in the left inferior frontal gyrus implicated in word search and retrieval. Here, 52 patients with temporal lobe lesions underwent clinical functional MRI while performing the category and letter fluency tasks. We investigated where lesion presence was inversely related to the magnitude of task-specific neural responses in pars triangularis and pars opercularis using a technique referred to as voxel-based lesion activity mapping (VLAM). We found that lesions to the left anterior superior temporal gyrus, left temporal pole, left hippocampus, left insula, and underlying inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus were associated with reduced neural responses in the left pars triangularis during the category fluency task. Lesion damage to the right hippocampus was associated with reduced neural responses in the left pars opercularis during category fluency. By contrast, lesions to the left posterior superior temporal gyrus, left supramarginal gyrus, left parietal operculum, and the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus and left arcuate fasciculus were associated with reduced neural responses in the left pars triangularis and the left pars opercularis during the letter fluency task. These results suggest that anatomically dissociable brain networks interact with the left inferior frontal gyrus when different search strategies constrain the retrieval of word representations.

The extent to which attention and memory processes rely on shared as opposed to distinct mechanisms is critical for understanding the role of both processes in cognition. As working memory sits at the intersection of external, perceptual input and long-term internal storage, it provides the ideal testbed for investigating overlaps between attention and memory. We hypothesize that memory brain states, whole-brain activity patterns that support long-term memory encoding and retrieval, map onto the external/internal axis of attention. Specifically, we hypothesize that external attention, focusing on sensory information, recruits the encoding state and internal attention, focusing on stored information, recruits the retrieval state. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a scalp electroencephalography study in which participants engaged in a working memory paradigm with and without maintenance demands. We used an independently validated cross-study multivariate pattern classifier to measure memory brain state engagement during change and target detection tasks. We find that the encoding state is recruited for stimulus presentation during both tasks, whereas the retrieval state is selectively recruited during the delay of the change detection task. Together, these results suggest that memory states map onto the external/internal axis of attention to support working memory, long-term memory, and cognition more broadly.

Episodic memory depends on neural representations encoded in the hippocampus. Experimental and computational evidence suggests that the hippocampus encodes pattern-separated representations that support later recall of episodic event elements. While extant data in humans predominantly focus on assaying the relationship between the similarity of spatial neural patterns at encoding and later memory performance, similarity of neural patterns in the temporal domain may also reveal encoding computations predictive of future memory. To examine how the similarity among temporal patterns of hippocampal activity during encoding relates to later episodic retrieval (associative cued recall and recognition memory), hippocampal activity was recorded from human participants (n=7) with implanted intracranial electrodes while they encoded arbitrary (A-B) paired-associates. Subsequent memory analyses first revealed that hippocampal high-frequency broadband power (HFB; 70-180Hz) was linked to a graded increase in memory strength; HFB power was greater during the encoding of pairs later correctly recalled relative to events later recognized and was lowest for events later forgotten. Second, and critically, subsequent memory analyses further revealed that more distinctive temporal patterns in the hippocampus during encoding -- indexed by the similarity of the HFB timeseries elicited by a given event to that elicited by other events -- were associated with superior subsequent memory performance. Finally, exploratory analyses revealed stimulus category effects on hippocampal HFB power during encoding and retrieval cuing. These results indicate that the temporal distinctiveness of hippocampal traces during encoding is important for subsequent retrieval of episodic event elements, consistent with theories that posit that pattern separation facilitates future remembering.

A central question in psycholinguistics in visual word recognition is whether morphologically complex words are obligatorily decomposed into stems and affixes during visual word recognition or whether whole- word access can occur when forms are frequent and familiar. The present study investigated how morphological complexity and lexical frequency jointly shape neural responses by leveraging Korean nominal inflection, whose transparent stem-suffix structure permits a clean dissociation between base (stem) frequency and surface (whole- word) frequency. Twenty-five native Korean speakers completed a rapid event-related fMRI lexical decision task involving simple and inflected nouns that varied parametrically in both frequency measures. Representational similarity analysis (RSA) revealed robust encoding of surface frequency--but not base frequency--in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) pars opercularis and supramarginal gyrus (SMG), with significantly stronger correlations for inflected than simple nouns. Univariate analyses converged with this result: surface frequency selectively increased activation for inflected nouns in inferior parietal regions, whereas base frequency showed no reliable effects in any ROI. These findings challenge models positing obligatory pre-lexical decomposition, instead supporting accounts in which morphological processing is shaped by post-lexical, usage-driven lexical statistics. Taken together, our findings shed light on a distributed perspective on morphological processing, suggesting that structural and statistical factors jointly constrain access to morphologically complex forms.

Many cognitive processes depend on integrating information as it becomes available to construct meaningful interpretations. Prior work has shown graded and incremental context effects, especially in language, but it remains less clear whether contextual integration exhibits a comparable temporal profile across symbolic domains when structured input is examined within congruent sequences. Twenty-seven participants processed congruent four-element sequences designed to be structurally comparable across lexical, algebraic, and graphical domains while event-related potentials were recorded. In the 250-500 ms interval, mean amplitudes increased systematically with sequence position within a predefined centro-parietal region of interest (p < .001). The Domain x Position interaction did not reach significance (p = .056), although modest domain-related differences in the buildup profile cannot be ruled out. A follow-up analysis showed that the increase to the response-relevant final position was larger than earlier increases (p < .001). Additional analyses indicated maximal amplitudes over parietal sites and the clearest graded increase over central sites. These findings indicate that context-sensitive activity was progressive but not uniform across sequence positions, with the strongest increase occurring when the sequence reached its final, response-relevant completion point. The presence of position-related increases across lexical, algebraic, and graphical domains is consistent with the view that centro-parietal ERP activity in the 250-500 ms window tracks the progressive buildup of contextual integration during structured sequence processing. HighlightsO_LIContext-sensitive ERP activity increased across sequence position. C_LIO_LIThe strongest increase occurred at the final completion point. C_LIO_LIMaximal amplitudes were observed over parietal electrodes. C_LIO_LICentral sites best captured graded position-related modulation. C_LIO_LIPosition-related buildup was observed across symbolic domains. C_LI

Most syntactic approaches converge on the fact that Tense and Agreement are two different functional categories, although there is less agreement on their exact representation and relative hierarchical order. Cross-linguistic agrammatic data seems to support the difference between Tense and Agreement, with patterns of dissociation reported from agrammatism between them, in which Tense is generally more impaired than Agreement. To examine whether there is evidence for such a dissociation of tense and agreement processing in neurotypical individuals, the present study employed Event-Related brain Potentials (ERPs) to study the real-time comprehension of Modern Standard Arabic sentences. Critical stimulus sentences were of the form Temporal Adverb-Subject-Verb-PP, in which the intransitive verb was in either the past or future tense, and was preceded by a singular or plural subject and an adverb indicating past or future tense. The subject nouns were all human and either masculine or feminine. The verbs either agreed with the subject noun or presented a person, number or gender agreement violation. They also either agreed or showed a mismatch with the temporal frame of the adverb, the latter being a tense violation. Results at the verb showed that both tense and agreement violations yielded a biphasic N400 - P600 effect. We discuss these results in light of previous ERP findings and conclude that despite the putative configurational differences between Tense and Agreement, the processing of the two categories in Arabic may deploy the same underlying cognitive mechanisms.

Iconicity refers to systematic links between word form and meaning. Although evidence for iconicity in natural language continues to grow, its neural basis remains unclear. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA), we examined iconic shape associations of auditory real words and pseudowords. The pseudowords were matched to the real words in phonemic and phonotactic properties, while differing primarily in the absence of learned semantic representations. Participants listened to each item and judged whether it sounded rounded or pointed. Searchlight MVPA revealed significant decoding for both stimulus types. For real words, iconic shape associations were decoded above chance in regions associated with visual and haptic shape processing (left lateral occipital complex and left anterior intraparietal sulcus), visual imagery (bilateral precuneus), phonological processing (bilateral supramarginal gyri), and semantic processing (left middle frontal and right superior frontal gyri). For pseudowords, significant decoding was found in regions associated with multisensory feature organization (right posterior intraparietal sulcus) and language processing (left angular and inferior frontal gyri). Together, these findings provide evidence for neural mechanisms mediating iconic associations, with language-related areas involved for both real words and pseudowords, and visual processing for real words.

The present study examined whether thematic reversal anomalies are processed similarly across subject and object experiencer constructions in Malayalam. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded as 30 first-language speakers of Malayalam read transitive sentences with the two types of experiencer verbs, in which the thematic role assignment for the preceding arguments was either correct or reverse. The reversal anomaly became apparent only at the position of the experiencer verb. A linear mixed-models analysis confirmed a biphasic N400-P600 effect at the verb for both verb types when the argument roles were reverse. Thus, our results suggest a uniform processing strategy for TRAs irrespective of the type of experiencer verb involved. However, the N400 amplitude was larger for the object experiencer verb compared to subject experiencer verbs. We suggest that the quantitative difference observed for object experiencer verbs is due to the inverse linking of grammatical function and thematic roles associated with these verbs. In other words, verb-specific linking properties modulate the processing of TRAs involving object experiencer verbs. We argue that this modulation occurs because the parser recalibrates cue weighting when the expected form-to-meaning mappings are overridden by the inverse linking properties of object experiencer verbs.

Interlimb skill generalization, defined as the transfer of a newly learned skill from the trained to the untrained limb, represents a fundamental aspect of human motor behavior with significant implications for rehabilitation and athletic training. Skill generalization is influenced by processes that drive learning and interact with the newly acquired memory. For instance, in our recent work, we reported that performing a secondary, cognitively demanding task immediately after a short skill-training session impaired skill generalization when the untrained arm was tested 24-hour later. This suggests that working memory (WM) interacts with the early stage of skill memory consolidation processes and thereby impacts skill generalization. Motivated by this finding, in the current study, we investigate how WM interacts with reactivated skill memory and its subsequent impact on skill generalization, tested 24 or 48-hour post skill training. We recruited right-handed young participants (n=95) who performed a fast, accurate reaching task with their dominant right arm during a short training session (50 trials) on Day-1. After 24-hour on Day-2, depending on the group type, participants had a brief skill reactivation session (10 trials or no reactivation) and then performed the WM task (or a control task) with their right arm. Interlimb generalization to the untrained left arm was assessed either immediately after the WM/control task on Day-2 or after a 24-hour gap on Day-3. We found that, engaging in the WM task (compared to the control task) after skill reactivation on Day-2 enhanced immediate generalization. Conversely, when generalization was tested 24-hour later on Day-3, the same WM engagement impaired skill generalization. These findings demonstrate that WM engagement during the post-reactivation phase has a time-dependent influence on interlimb generalization. WM can facilitate immediate generalization, possibly by sustaining neural processes that promote skill memory generalization across effectors. However, when a 24-hour time gap is introduced, generalization is disrupted following WM engagement, possibly because of interference between underlying neural processes involved in WM and reactivation-induced (re)consolidation of the skill memory. This study highlights the delicate interplay among WM, motor memory reactivation dynamics, and skill generalization and suggests a time-dependent interplay of neural processes critical for optimizing outcomes in motor learning and clinical rehabilitation protocols.

It is critical to identify which factors induce specific brain states as these large-scale patterns of coordinated neural activity drive downstream processing and behavior. The retrieval state, a brain state engaged when attempting to retrieve the past, is thought to specifically support episodic memory, remembering experiences within a spatiotemporal context, as opposed to semantic memory, remembering general knowledge. However, we hypothesize that the retrieval state reflects internal attention engaged to access stored episodic and semantic information. To test these alternatives, we recorded scalp electroencephalography while participants made episodic, semantic, or perceptual judgments, and applied an independently validated mnemonic state classifier to measure retrieval state engagement. We found that retrieval state engagement was greater for both episodic and semantic judgments compared to perceptual judgments. These findings suggest that the retrieval state reflects a domain-general internal attention process that supports not just episodic memory, but internally directed cognition.

Healthy older adults exhibit both selective impairments in episodic memory - memory for events situated within a specific time and place - and deficits in executive function, reflected by difficulty switching between different tasks and inhibiting task-irrelevant information. Prior work has shown that older adults show diminished mnemonic brain state engagement - recruitment of whole brain activity patterns that selectively support memory encoding and memory retrieval. Our hypothesis is that older adults are biased toward the retrieval state and, due to executive function deficits, cannot easily switch out of this state when task-irrelevant. Our goal was to determine the extent to which stimulus processing time impacts older adult mnemonic state engagement, with the expectation that longer processing times would enable older adults to switch out of a task-irrelevant retrieval state. We recorded scalp electroencephalography (EEG) while younger and older adult participants explicitly encoded and retrieved object stimuli under variable stimulus durations. Using a combination of multivariate decoding approaches, we find that under time constraints, older adults both under-recruit a young-adult like retrieval state when task-relevant, but over-recruit a participant-specific retrieval state when task-irrelevant. Older adults may thus recruit idiosyncratic activity patterns to compensate for difficulties engaging young-adult like mnemonic brain states. Taken together, these findings suggest that although older adults retain the ability to engage encoding and retrieval brain states, they require more processing time to both initiate and maintain goal-relevant mnemonic states.

Claims about shared neural processing between object and action words have mainly been based on spatial overlap. Spatial overlap alone, however, provides an incomplete understanding of neural (dis)similarity. Here, we compared object and action word retrieval within participants utilising temporal, spectral, and spatial information in the electroencephalogram (EEG) recorded during context-driven object and action picture naming. Constrained sentence contexts elicited pre-picture lexical-semantic word planning for object and action words, indexed by power decreases in the alpha-beta frequency range (8 - 30 Hz). Using a novel approach based on mutual information and source-reconstructed EEG signal, we computed joint temporo-spectro-spatial (dis)similarity indices across object and action naming in the constrained condition where information retrieval occurred. Spatially, dissimilarities were found in bilateral frontal, anterior superior temporal, and right anterior-to-middle temporal areas. Similarity, by contrast, was linked to the precunei and right temporo-parietal areas, regions associated with lexical-semantic processing and word retrieval. Crucially, similarity in the precunei compared to the temporo-parietal regions was characterised by differential patterns of the alpha-beta activity, implying processing and, potentially, functional differences between the areas. This finding highlights how conclusions about shared neural processes depend on the degree of abstraction (e.g., spatial, spatial-spectral) chosen to define the compared neural mechanisms. We tentatively interpret the contribution of the right hemisphere and left frontal areas to (dis)similarity as coarser, less fine-grained lexical-semantic computations.

Cortical tracking of acoustic features is essential for the neural processing of continuous stimuli such as speech and music. For example, it has been shown that children with dyslexia show atypical cortical tracking. This tracking may therefore reflect a fundamental auditory temporal processing mechanism supporting literacy more generally. In the current pre-registered study, we tested the hypothesis that cortical tracking of speech and music predicts reading ability in healthy young adults (N = 32), evaluated through a lexical decision task. Participants first completed an online session in which they performed a lexical decision task to assess their reading skills. This was followed by an electroencephalography (EEG) session, in which participants listened to a naturalistic short story and a music track. Using mutual information, we showed that neural activity aligned to both speech and music across a wide range of frequencies. Interestingly, cortical tracking was stronger for speech at very low frequencies, while it was stronger for music at higher frequencies. Critically, cortical tracking predicted reaction times in the lexical decision task in a frequency-dependent manner: stronger delta-band tracking (~1-3 Hz) for both speech and music was associated with faster reaction times, whereas stronger alpha-band tracking (~12 Hz) for speech was associated with slower reaction times. These findings remained significant even when controlling for stimulus type, age, musical experience and reading enjoyment. These results suggest that cortical tracking of speech and music reflect a domain-general temporal processing mechanism that is associated with reading ability beyond stimulus-specific features, and beyond development. These findings advance the neurobiological underpinnings of literacy and could potentially be leveraged for developing new reading interventions.