Loading metrics Open Access Peer-reviewed Research Article Citation: Shimizu R, Antonello RJ, Singh C, Mesgarani N (2026) Interpretable embeddings of speech explain and enhance the brain encoding performance of audio models. PLoS Comput Biol 22(10): e1014906. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1014906 Editor: Yuanning Li, ShanghaiTech University, CHINA Received: May 4, 2026; Accepted: October 15, 2026; Published: October 30, 2026 Copyright: © 2026 Shimizu et al.