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Listening to speech activates motor areas involved in speech production

Nature Neuroscience volume 7, pages 701–702 (2004)Cite this article

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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Figure 1: Areas activated by passive listening to meaningless monosyllables in three representative subjects.
Figure 2: Characterization of the relationships between listening and motor areas.

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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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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center, University of California, Los Angeles, 90095, California, USA

    Stephen M Wilson & Marco Iacoboni

  2. Neuroscience Interdepartmental Program, University of California, Los Angeles, 90095, California, USA

    Stephen M Wilson

  3. Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, University of California, Los Angeles, 90095, California, USA

    Marco Iacoboni

  4. Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, 92093, California, USA

    Ayşe Pinar Saygin & Martin I Sereno

Authors
  1. Stephen M Wilson
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  2. Ayşe Pinar Saygin
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  3. Martin I Sereno
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  4. Marco Iacoboni
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Correspondence to Stephen M Wilson.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

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)

Supplementary Methods (PDF 36 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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