[Source:  Science Daily]

Have you ever found yourself finishing someone else’s sentences, even though you don’t really know them that well? Fortunately, the ability to predict what someone is going to say next isn’t the preserve of turtledoves or those in long-term relationships. Our brain processes all kinds of information to estimate what’s going to come next, and the speed at which the speaker is talking, or speech rate, plays an important role.

This study, published in the journal Current Biology, delved deeper to find out what happens on a neural level. “The findings show neural dynamics predict the timing of future speech items based on past speech rate, and this influences how ongoing words are heard,” says Anne Kösem of the MPI and the Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, and first author of the research paper.

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