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One key mechanism thought to underlie speech processing is the alignment of cortical brain rhythms to the acoustic input, a mechanism termed entrainment. Recent work showed that transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) in speech relevant frequencies or adapted to the speech envelope can in fact enhance speech processing. However, it is unclear whether an oscillatory tES is necessary, or if transients in the stimulation (e.g., peaks in the tES signal) at relevant times are sufficient.

In this study we used a novel pulsed-tES-protocol and tested behaviorally if a transiently pulsed - instead of a persistently oscillating - tES signal, can improve speech processing.

While subjects listened to spoken sentences embedded in noise, brief electric direct current pulses aligned to speech transients (syllable onsets) were applied to auditory cortex regions to modulate comprehension. Additionally, we …