Stimulus and target effects in the semantic categorization task. (A) Time–frequency plots of responses to complex tones (left column), monosyllabic words “cat,” “dog,” “five,” and “ten,” presented as nontarget and target stimuli (middle and right column, respectively), averaged across all recording sites in each of the five ROIs (top to bottom). Responses were only included into the averages if they were correct rejections for nontarget trials and correct hits for target trials (i.e., missed target trials and false alarm responses were excluded). Stimulus schematic is shown on top in gray; distribution of RTs for target hits is shown as a violin plot. Dotted rectangles denote the time windows used for the quantitative analyses of gamma and alpha ERBP (black: 50–350 ms, 30–150 Hz; magenta: 350–650 ms, 8–14 Hz). Different ERBP scales are used for auditory cortex and STS to better visualize the smaller responses in STSU and STSL. (B) Distribution of gamma and alpha ERBP (top and bottom rows) across sites in each ROI, grouped by condition (nontarget tones, nontarget words, and target words). In each violin plot, circle denotes the median, horizontal line denotes the mean, bar denotes Q₁ and Q₃, and whiskers show the range of lower and higher adjacent values. Statistical significance of differences was established using LME models with ROI as the fixed effect and subject as the random effect. Gamma ERBP in response to target words is not shown in the top panels, as target effect was not examined in early gamma activity (see text for details). Different y-scales are used for auditory cortex and STS to better visualize the smaller responses in STSU and STSL.