Dynamic speech representations in the human temporal lobe

•Recent methodological advances reveal underlying information representations.•Spectrotemporal regions such as the STG show strong context-dependent responses to speech.•Contextual modulation occurs both in situ and through interactive connectivity between regions.•Context-dependent representations may give rise to abstract representations of words.•Multivariate and machine learning statistics will help uncover how acoustic representations transform into words.

Speech perception requires rapid integration of acoustic input with context-dependent knowledge. Recent methodological advances have allowed researchers to identify underlying information representations in primary and secondary auditory cortex and to examine how context modulates these representations. We review recent studies that focus on contextual modulations of neural activity in the superior temporal gyrus (STG), a major hub for spectrotemporal encoding. Recent findings suggest a highly interactive flow of information processing through the auditory ventral stream, including influences of higher-level linguistic and metalinguistic knowledge, even within individual areas. Such mechanisms may give rise to more abstract representations, such as those for words. We discuss the importance of characterizing representations of context-dependent and dynamic patterns of neural activity in the approach to speech perception research.