Abstract
To examine the role of motor areas in speech perception, we carried out a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study in which subjects listened passively to monosyllables and produced the same speech sounds. Listening to speech activated bilaterally a superior portion of ventral premotor cortex that largely overlapped a speech production motor area centered just posteriorly on the border of Brodmann areas 4a and 6, which we distinguished from a more ventral speech production area centered in area 4p. Our findings support the view that the motor system is recruited in mapping acoustic inputs to a phonetic code.
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Acknowledgements
We thank K. Amunts for providing cytoarchitectonic maps, the UCSD Center for Functional MRI, and the Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center. Supported by NSF grants REC 0107077 and BCS 0224321.
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Supplementary Table 1
Areas activated by listening to speech in six or more subjects, and motor areas activated by producing speech or bimanual movement. (PDF 22 kb)
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Wilson, S., Saygin, A., Sereno, M. et al. Listening to speech activates motor areas involved in speech production. Nat Neurosci 7, 701–702 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1263
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1263
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