Speech perception performance is mediated by brain regions involved with speech production

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Speech perception performance is mediated by brain regions involved with speech production Daniel Callan1, 2*, A. Callan3 and Mitsuo Kawato1 1 Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, Japan 2 National Institute of Communication Techologies, Japan 3 ATR Cognitive Information Science Laboratories, Japan The finding that premotor areas are active not only during action production but also during observation of action, Mirror Neuron System, has led to considerable conjecture regarding the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying a variety of abilities ranging from perception to social cognition. Despite these findings, the relationship of this activity to perceptual performance has not been demonstrated. Without such evidence, it may be argued that this activity does not reflect neural processes important for perception at all, but merely reflects covert imitation of the perceived action that is the product of perceptual processing. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging as well as 208 channel MEG for each subject (N=13) to measure brain activity to correct and incorrect trials on an auditory phonetic identification task. The task involved listening to a syllable (/ba/, /bo/, /da/, do/) presented aurally embedded in white noise and selecting the initial phoneme (/b/ or /d/) by button press as quickly and accurately as possible using the left hand. An event-related analysis was employed in which the correct trails were contrasted with incorrect trials. An additional fMRI experiment was conducted in which subjects overtly produced the same syllables as were presented on the auditory speech perception task. Only the left premotor cortex showed super-threshold activity differences for correct over incorrect trials (p < 0.005; spatial extent > 50 voxels, small volume correction pFDR < 0.05) (Figure 1). The activity was in the same region found to be active during speech production of the syllables, supporting the hypothesis that articulatory processes serve to facilitate perceptual performance, while further dispelling concerns that activity found in this region is merely a product of covert imitation of the perceived action. These results have far reaching implications bringing performance related support to studies proposing that action perception is mediated by brain regions involved with action production (Mirror Neuron Theory). pic1 tn_pic1 pic Conference: 10th International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience, Bodrum, Turkey, 1 Sep - 5 Sep, 2008. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Language Citation: Callan D, Callan A and Kawato M (2008). Speech perception performance is mediated by brain regions involved with speech production. Conference Abstract: 10th International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience. doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.09.2009.01.241 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 09 Dec 2008; Published Online: 09 Dec 2008. * Correspondence: Daniel Callan, Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, Kyoto, Japan, dcallan@atr.jp Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Daniel Callan A. Callan Mitsuo Kawato Google Daniel Callan A. Callan Mitsuo Kawato Google Scholar Daniel Callan A. Callan Mitsuo Kawato PubMed Daniel Callan A. Callan Mitsuo Kawato Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.