Preparation for speech perception and production functionally dissociates ventral, dorsal and articulatory pathways in the human brain

Abstract

Introduction: Current thinking divides speech processing in speech perception and speech recognition. A dual-stream model of speech processing proposes a left-lateralized dorsal stream mapping acoustic speech signals to frontal articulatory networks aiding in speech perception. The bilaterally organized ventral stream is supposed to subserve speech recognition (Hickok and Poeppel, Nature Reviews Neuroscience 2007). Yet, overt articulation does not engage the dorsal stream, at least for overt reading (Kell et al., Brain 2009 and Kell et al., Cerebral Cortex 2010). We set out to disentangle the functional roles of the dorsal and ventral speech processing stream and their contribution to lateralization by comparing preparation for and execution of speech processing with speech production.