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Speech repetition as a window on the neurobiology of auditory–motor integration for speech: A voxel-based lesion symptom mapping study
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Speech repetition as a window on the neurobiology of auditory–motor integration for speech: A voxel-based lesion symptom mapping study

Corianne Rogalsky, Tasha Poppa, Kuan-Hua Chen, Steven W Anderson, Hanna Damasio, Tracy Love and Gregory Hickok
Neuropsychologia, Vol.71(May), pp.18-27
05/2015
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.03.012
PMCID: PMC4417364
PMID: 25777496
url
http://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.03.012View
Open Access

Abstract

For more than a century, speech repetition has been used as an assay for gauging the integrity of the auditory–motor pathway in aphasia, thought classically to involve a linkage between Wernicke's area and Broca's area via the arcuate fasciculus. During the last decade, evidence primarily from functional imaging in healthy individuals has refined this picture both computationally and anatomically, suggesting the existence of a cortical hub located at the parietal–temporal boundary (area Spt) that functions to integrate auditory and motor speech networks for both repetition and spontaneous speech production. While functional imaging research can pinpoint the regions activated in repetition/auditory–motor integration, lesion-based studies are needed to infer causal involvement. Previous lesion studies of repetition have yielded mixed results with respect to Spt's critical involvement in speech repetition. The present study used voxel-based lesion symptom mapping (VLSM) to investigate the neuroanatomy of repetition of both real words and non-words in a sample of 47 patients with focal left hemisphere brain damage. VLSMs identified a large voxel cluster spanning gray and white matter in the left temporal–parietal junction, including area Spt, where damage was significantly related to poor non-word repetition. Repetition of real words implicated a very similar dorsal network including area Spt. Cortical regions including Spt were implicated in repetition performance even when white matter damage was factored out. In addition, removing variance associated with speech perception abilities did not alter the overall lesion pattern for either task. Together with past functional imaging work, our results suggest that area Spt is integral in both word and non-word repetition, that its contribution is above and beyond that made by white matter pathways, and is not driven by perceptual processes alone. These findings are highly consistent with the claim that Spt is an area of sensory-motor translation in speech processing. •Auditory–motor brain networks are investigated using speech repetition.•Cortical area Spt, white matter and parietal cortex are implicated in repetition.•Spt contributes to repetition above and beyond the white matter contribution.•These results hold with perceptual processing factored out.•Findings are highly consistent with Spt being an area of sensory-motor translation.
 Speech repetition Speech production Voxel-based lesion symptom mapping Sensory-motor integration Area Spt

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