A Cortical Model for a θ-Oscillator Segmenting Syllables

In the human cortex, the auditory signal is segmented robustly into syllables using theta-oscillations, where the phase and instantaneous frequency of each theta-cycle corresponds to the position and duration of a syllable. Recently, in the superior temporal gyrus, ensamples of neurons sensitive to edge features have been detected, which spike at the maximal rise of the envelope of the auditory signal at the onset of the nucleus of a syllable. The paper presents a cortical model of an theta-oscillator driven by features of the envelope of the auditory signal and driven by edge features resetting the theta-phase. First experiments on the performance of the theta-oscillator are presented.