{"ID":2832921,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.04642","arxiv_id":"2512.04642","title":"Limit cycles for speech","abstract":"Rhythmic fluctuations in acoustic energy and accompanying neuronal excitations in cortical oscillations are characteristic of human speech, yet whether a corresponding rhythmicity inheres in the articulatory movements that generate speech remains unclear. The received understanding of speech movements as discrete, goal-oriented actions struggles to make contact with the rhythmicity findings. In this work, we demonstrate that an unintuitive -- but no less principled than the conventional -- representation for discrete movements reveals a pervasive limit cycle organization and unlocks the recovery of previously inaccessible rhythmic structure underlying the motor activity of speech. These results help resolve a time-honored tension between the ubiquity of biological rhythmicity and discreteness in speech, the quintessential human higher function, by revealing a rhythmic organization at the most fundamental level of individual articulatory actions.","short_abstract":"Rhythmic fluctuations in acoustic energy and accompanying neuronal excitations in cortical oscillations are characteristic of human speech, yet whether a corresponding rhythmicity inheres in the articulatory movements that generate speech remains unclear. The received understanding of speech movements as discrete, goal...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.04642","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.04642v1","authors":"[\"Adamantios I. Gafos\",\"Stephan R. Kuberski\"]","published":"2025-12-04T10:16:57Z","proceeding":"q-bio.NC","tasks":"[\"q-bio.NC\",\"cs.CL\"]","methods":"[\"Generative Adversarial Network\"]","has_code":false}