Listening to speech activates motor areas involved in speech production
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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The left ventral premotor cortex is associated with articulatory recoding when participants passively listen to unfamiliar speech sounds.
“(ii) the left ventral premotor cortex was also associated with articulatory recoding when participants passively listened to unfamiliar speech sounds (Wilson et al., 2004; Wilson and Iacoboni, 2006);”
From A review and synthesis of the first 20years of PET and fMRI studies of heard speech, spoken language and reading (2012) · cites this paper as Wilson et al., 2004
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“data [19], support the notion of a ‘‘phonological resonance’’ allowing for an automatic recruitment of motor structures active during speech production and also during speech processing.”
Background
- Authors
- Wilson, S. M., Saygin, A. P., Sereno, M. I., & Iacoboni, M.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Los Angeles (US)
- University of California San Diego (US)
- Corresponding author
- Wilson, Stephen M
- Venue
- Nature Neuroscience
- Published
- 2004-06-06
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- 701-702
- ISSN
- 1097-6256 (ISSN-L)
- 1546-1726
- OpenAlex
- W1984689963
- Cited by
- 885
- References
- 15
- Citations by year
- 2026: 27 · 2025: 28 · 2024: 43 · 2023: 23 · 2022: 33 · 2021: 29 · 2020: 40 · 2019: 37 · 2018: 42 · 2017: 45 · 2016: 48 · 2015: 46 · 2014: 47 · 2013: 59 · 2012: 53
- FWCI
- 14.12
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Nature Neuroscience (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation
- University of California, San Diego
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Phonetics and Phonology Research
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neuroscience and Music Perception
- Keywords
- speech perception, motor areas, speech production, ventral premotor cortex, Brodmann area 6, phonetic coding, acoustic-phonetic mapping
- MeSH terms
- Acoustic Stimulation, Adult, Brain Mapping, Female, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Motor Cortex, Phonetics, Speech, Speech Perception
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