Neuroimaging has revealed a core network of cortical regions that contribute to speech production, but the functional organization of this network remains poorly understood. Purpose: We describe efforts to identify reliable boundaries around functionally homogenous regions within the cortical speech motor control network in order to improve the…

Purpose: This review provides clinicians with an overview of recent findings relevant to understanding why listeners with normal hearing thresholds (NHTs) sometimes suffer from communication difficulties in noisy settings. Method: The results from neuroscience and psychoacoustics are reviewed. Results: In noisy settings, listeners focus their…

Models of speech perception suggest a dorsal stream connecting the temporal and inferior parietal lobe with the inferior frontal gyrus. This stream is thought to involve an auditory motor loop that translates acoustic information into motor/articulatory commands and is further influenced by decision making processes that involve maintenance of…

How does the brain's response to speech change over the first months of life? Although behavioral findings indicate that neonates' listening biases are sharpened over the first months of life, with a species-specific preference for speech emerging by 3 months, the neural substrates underlying this developmental change are unknown. We…

Models of speaking distinguish producing meaning, words and syntax as three different linguistic components of speaking. Nevertheless, little is known about the brain's integrated neuronal infrastructure for speech production. We investigated semantic, lexical and syntactic aspects of speaking using fMRI. In a picture description task, we…

Diffusion tensor imaging tractography is a structural magnetic resonance imaging technique allowing reconstruction and assessment of the integrity of three dimensional white matter tracts, as indexed by their fractional anisotropy. It is assumed that the left arcuate fasciculus plays a crucial role for reading development, as it connects two…

Word segmentation, detecting word boundaries in continuous speech, is a fundamental aspect of language learning that can occur solely by the computation of statistical and speech cues. Fifty-four children underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while listening to three streams of concatenated syllables that contained either high…

Down syndrome is characterized by disproportionately severe impairments of speech and language, yet little is known about the neural underpinnings of these deficits. We compared fMRI activation patterns during passive story listening in 9 young adults with Down syndrome and 9 approximately age-matched, typically developing controls. The typically…

To further the understanding of how the brain operates at the most basic level of interest to human communication theorists, intrapersonal communication, this paper reviews the arguments against the hemispheric dominance theory and for a neurological processing style model of brain functions and then focuses on the impact of the corpus callosum (a…

Introduction: In this review article we outline the thinking and evidence behind our hypothesis that the problems suffered by dyslexic people may be attributable to cerebellar deficit. Method: Firstly, we provide an overview of recent evidence that proposes a central role for the cerebellum in cognitive skills, in particular those scaffolded by…