From phonemes to articulatory codes: an fMRI study of the role of Broca's area in speech production.

ABSTRACT: We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the neuroanatomical substrates of phonetic encoding and the generation of articulatory codes from phonological representations. Our focus was on the role of the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and in particular whether the LIFG plays a role in sublexical phonological processing such as syllabification or whether it is directly involved in phonetic encoding and the generation of articulatory codes. To answer this question, we contrasted the brain activation patterns elicited by pseudowords with high- or low-sublexical frequency components, which we expected would reveal areas related to the generation of articulatory codes but not areas related to phonological encoding. We found significant activation of a premoto

SUBMITTER: Papoutsi M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2722428 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature