Skip to main content
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences logoLink to Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
. 2001 Mar 7;268(1466):451–457. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2000.0393

Dispersed activation in the left temporal cortex for speech-reading in congenitally deaf people.

M MacSweeney 1, R Campbell 1, G A Calvert 1, P K McGuire 1, A S David 1, J Suckling 1, C Andrew 1, B Woll 1, M J Brammer 1
PMCID: PMC1088627  PMID: 11296856

Abstract

Does the lateral temporal cortex require acoustic exposure in order to become specialized for speech processing? Six hearing participants and six congenitally deaf participants, all with spoken English as their first langugage, were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing a simple speech-reading task. Focal activation of the left lateral temporal cortex was significantly reduced in the deaf group compared with the hearing group. Activation within this region was present in individual deaf participants, but varied in location from person to person. Early acoustic experience may be required for regions within the left temporal cortex in order to develop into a coherent network with subareas devoted to specific speech analysis functions.

Full Text

The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (193.9 KB).

Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

  1. Bernstein L. E., Demorest M. E., Tucker P. E. Speech perception without hearing. Percept Psychophys. 2000 Feb;62(2):233–252. doi: 10.3758/bf03205546. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  2. Binder J. R., Frost J. A., Hammeke T. A., Bellgowan P. S., Springer J. A., Kaufman J. N., Possing E. T. Human temporal lobe activation by speech and nonspeech sounds. Cereb Cortex. 2000 May;10(5):512–528. doi: 10.1093/cercor/10.5.512. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  3. Binder J. R. Neuroanatomy of language processing studied with functional MRI. Clin Neurosci. 1997;4(2):87–94. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  4. Bullmore E. T., Suckling J., Overmeyer S., Rabe-Hesketh S., Taylor E., Brammer M. J. Global, voxel, and cluster tests, by theory and permutation, for a difference between two groups of structural MR images of the brain. IEEE Trans Med Imaging. 1999 Jan;18(1):32–42. doi: 10.1109/42.750253. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  5. Bullmore E., Brammer M., Williams S. C., Rabe-Hesketh S., Janot N., David A., Mellers J., Howard R., Sham P. Statistical methods of estimation and inference for functional MR image analysis. Magn Reson Med. 1996 Feb;35(2):261–277. doi: 10.1002/mrm.1910350219. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  6. Calvert G. A., Brammer M. J., Bullmore E. T., Campbell R., Iversen S. D., David A. S. Response amplification in sensory-specific cortices during crossmodal binding. Neuroreport. 1999 Aug 20;10(12):2619–2623. doi: 10.1097/00001756-199908200-00033. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  7. Calvert G. A., Bullmore E. T., Brammer M. J., Campbell R., Williams S. C., McGuire P. K., Woodruff P. W., Iversen S. D., David A. S. Activation of auditory cortex during silent lipreading. Science. 1997 Apr 25;276(5312):593–596. doi: 10.1126/science.276.5312.593. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  8. Calvert G. A., Campbell R., Brammer M. J. Evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging of crossmodal binding in the human heteromodal cortex. Curr Biol. 2000 Jun 1;10(11):649–657. doi: 10.1016/s0960-9822(00)00513-3. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  9. Campbell R. Everyday speechreading: understanding seen speech action. Scand J Psychol. 1998 Sep;39(3):163–167. doi: 10.1111/1467-9450.393073. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  10. Friston K. J., Josephs O., Rees G., Turner R. Nonlinear event-related responses in fMRI. Magn Reson Med. 1998 Jan;39(1):41–52. doi: 10.1002/mrm.1910390109. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  11. Liberman AM, Whalen DH. On the relation of speech to language. Trends Cogn Sci. 2000 May;4(5):187–196. doi: 10.1016/s1364-6613(00)01471-6. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  12. MacSweeney M., Amaro E., Calvert G. A., Campbell R., David A. S., McGuire P., Williams S. C., Woll B., Brammer M. J. Silent speechreading in the absence of scanner noise: an event-related fMRI study. Neuroreport. 2000 Jun 5;11(8):1729–1733. doi: 10.1097/00001756-200006050-00026. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  13. Mummery C. J., Ashburner J., Scott S. K., Wise R. J. Functional neuroimaging of speech perception in six normal and two aphasic subjects. J Acoust Soc Am. 1999 Jul;106(1):449–457. doi: 10.1121/1.427068. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  14. Rönnberg J., Andersson J., Samuelsson S., Söderfeldt B., Lyxell B., Risberg J. A speechreading expert: the case of MM. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 1999 Feb;42(1):5–20. doi: 10.1044/jslhr.4201.05. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  15. Vandenberghe R., Price C., Wise R., Josephs O., Frackowiak R. S. Functional anatomy of a common semantic system for words and pictures. Nature. 1996 Sep 19;383(6597):254–256. doi: 10.1038/383254a0. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  16. Zatorre R. J., Evans A. C., Meyer E., Gjedde A. Lateralization of phonetic and pitch discrimination in speech processing. Science. 1992 May 8;256(5058):846–849. doi: 10.1126/science.1589767. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

Articles from Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences are provided here courtesy of The Royal Society

RESOURCES