More broadly, Spt is situated in the middle of a network of auditory (superior temporal sulcus) and motor (pars opercularis, premotor cortex) regions ( Buchsbaum et al., 2001, Buchsbaum

et al., 2005 and Hickok et al., 2003), perfectly positioned both functionally and anatomically to support sensorimotor integration for speech and related vocal-tract functions. It is worth noting that the supramarginal gyrus, a region just dorsal to Spt in the inferior parietal lobe, has been implicated in aspects of speech production (for a recent review see Price, 2010). In group-averaged analyses using standard brain anatomy normalization, area Spt can mis-localize to the supramarginal gyrus (A.L. Isenberg, K.L. Vaden, K. Saberi, L.T. Muftuler, G.H., unpublished data), raising the possibility that previous work implicating the supramarginal gyrus in speech production may www.selleckchem.com/products/dinaciclib-sch727965.html in fact reflect Spt activity. Area Spt, together with a network of regions including STG, premotor cortex, and the cerebellum, has been implicated in auditory feedback control of speech production, suggesting that Spt is part of the SFC system.

In an fMRI study, Tourville selleck screening library et al. (2008) asked subjects to articulate speech and either fed it back to them altered (up or down shift of the first formant frequency) or unaltered. Shifted compared to unshifted speech feedback resulted in activation of area Spt, as well as bilateral superior temporal areas, right motor and somatosensory-related regions, and right cerebellum. Interestingly, damage to the vicinity of Spt has been associated with conduction aphasia,

a syndrome in which sound-based errors in speech production is the dominant symptom found (Baldo et al., 2008, Goodglass, 1992 and Buchsbaum et al., 2011) and these patients have a decreased sensitivity to the normally disruptive effects of delayed auditory feedback (Boller and Marcie, 1978 and Boller et al., 1978). These observations are in line with the view that Spt plays a role in auditory feedback control of speech production. A brief digression is in order at this point regarding the functional organization of the planum temporale in relation to Spt and the mechanisms under discussion. The planum temporale generally has been found to activate under a variety of stimulus conditions. For example, it is sensitive not only to speech-related acoustic features as discussed above, but also to auditory spatial features (Griffiths and Warren, 2002 and Rauschecker and Scott, 2009). This has led some authors to propose that the planum temporale functions as a “computational hub” (Griffiths and Warren, 2002) and/or supports a “common computational mechanism” (Rauschecker and Scott, 2009) that applies to a variety of stimulus events.