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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2014 Nov 20.
Published in final edited form as: Nat Rev Neurosci. 2009 Mar 11;10(4):295–302. doi: 10.1038/nrn2603

Figure 1. The anatomy of sound perception.

Figure 1

This figure shows the posterior and anterior auditory streams. The main anatomical structures that are recruited for speech perception are shown in colour on a lateral view of the human brain. From primary auditory cortex (A1), the arrows depict the putative direction of an anterior and posterior stream of processing for speech and other sounds. The anterior stream decodes meaning in sounds (“what”) and encompasses auditory association cortex in the superior temporal lobe (green) and inferior frontal cortex (red), whereas the posterior pathway has been suggested to be engaged in sensorimotor integration and spatial processing (“how”, “where”), and includes parts of posterior superior temporal gyrus (green), inferior parietal cortex (blue), motor and sensory areas (orange and yellow, respectively), and inferior frontal gyrus (red)9, 23, 93.