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Functional Anatomy of Spoken Input. Note that the low-level auditory pathway is not specialized for speech sounds Both speech and non-speech sounds activate primary auditory cortex (bilateral Heschl’s Gyrus ) on the top of the superior temporal gyrus. Functional Anatomy of Spoken Input.
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Functional Anatomy of Spoken Input • Note that the low-level auditory pathway is not specialized for speech sounds • Both speech and non-speech sounds activate primary auditory cortex (bilateral Heschl’sGyrus) on the top of the superior temporal gyrus
Functional Anatomy of Spoken Input • Which parts of the auditory pathway are specialized for speech? • Binder et al. (2000) • fMRI • Presented several kinds of stimuli: • white noise • pure tones • non-words • reversed words • real words These have non-word-like acoustical properties These have word-like acoustical properties but no lexical associations word-like acoustical properties and lexical associations
Functional Anatomy of Spoken Input • Relative to “baseline” scanner noise • Widespread auditory cortex activation (bilaterally) for all stimuli • Why isn’t this surprising?
Functional Anatomy of Spoken Input • Statistical contrasts reveal specialization for speech-like sounds • superior temporal gyrus • Somewhat more prominent on left side
Functional Anatomy of Spoken Input • Further contrasts to identify specialization for words relative to other speech-like sounds revealed only a few small clusters of voxels • Brodmann areas • Area 39 • 20, 21 and 37 • 46 and 10