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News and views on the neural organization of language

Greg Hickok
94 posts

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March 5, 2009
07:07 PM
1,448 views

Understanding language without ability to speak

by Greg Hickok in Talking Brains

In 1962 Eric Lenneberg published an interesting case report of an 8 year old boy who had a congenital disorder that prevented him from developing the ability to speak. He could perform many oro-facial behaviors like chewing, swallowing, blowing, licking and he spontaneously made noises "that sound somewhat like Swiss yodeling" but he could not speak. With intensive speech therapy he eventually achieved the ability to "repeat a few words after his speech therapist or his mother but the words ar........ Read more »

G Rizzolatti, & M Arbib. (1998) Language within our grasp. Trends in Neurosciences, 21(5), 188-194. DOI: 10.1016/S0166-2236(98)01260-0

March 12, 2009
03:40 PM
1,342 views

Bilateral lesions to Broca's area

by Greg Hickok in Talking Brains

A couple weeks ago a reader raised the question of whether unilateral lesions to Broca's area constitute a strong enough test of the motor theory of speech perception. I suggested they were because they sometimes severely disrupted speech production with minimal effects on the recognition (comprehension) of speech. The question continued to nag me though, so I started looking for cases in the literature of bilateral lesions to Broca's area. It turns out there are a handful. Here is the most in........ Read more »

HICKOK, G., OKADA, K., BARR, W., PA, J., ROGALSKY, C., DONNELLY, K., BARDE, L., & GRANT, A. (2008) Bilateral capacity for speech sound processing in auditory comprehension: Evidence from Wada procedures. Brain and Language, 107(3), 179-184. DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2008.09.006

August 21, 2008
12:44 PM
1,336 views

Mirror neurons, hubs, and puppet masters

by Greg Hickok in Talking Brains

Hubs are IN in cognitive neuroscience. Griffiths and Warren have their computational hub in the planum temporale, and Patterson et al. have their semantic hub in the anterior temporal lobe. Long before the hub we had the convergence zone of Antonio Damasio and the transmodal node of Marcel Mesulam which he described as an "epicenter" (I like that term -- sounds very important). Despite the variation in terminology, the basic idea behind all these proposals is similar: there are regions in ........ Read more »

Antonio Damasio, & Kaspar Meyer. (2008) Behind the looking-glass. Nature, 454(7201), 167-168. DOI: 10.1038/454167a

September 9, 2008
12:45 PM
1,309 views

TMS to motor cortex affects lexical decision to body-part related words - What does this tell us?

by Greg Hickok in Talking Brains

One of the most impressive demonstrations of the functional relevance of motor cortex to action-word processing comes from a TMS study by Friedemann Pulvermuller and colleagues (2005, European Journal of Neuroscience, 21:793-97). These researchers stimulated motor cortex for hand or leg areas while subjects performed a lexical decision task. TMS to hand areas led to faster reaction times to hand-related words (e.g., pick) than leg-related words (e.g., kick), whereas the reverse held for TMS to ........ Read more »

Friedemann Pulvermuller, Olaf Hauk, Vadim V. Nikulin, & Risto J. Ilmoniemi. (2005) Functional links between motor and language systems. European Journal of Neuroscience, 21(3), 793-797. DOI: 10.1111/j.1460-9568.2005.03900.x

November 3, 2008
04:56 PM
1,293 views

Ventral premotor cortex and action processing: Urgesi, et al.

by Greg Hickok in Talking Brains

Here is another pair of studies that a reviewer suggested I failed to discuss because they didn't support my pre-conceived hypothesis regarding mirror neurons. It's true that I didn't discuss them, but not because I cherry picked papers to discuss. I simply wasn't aware of these. After looking at them, I realized that they did not even test action understanding, so I could have justified leaving them out. Nonetheless, because they apparently are viewed a strong evidence for the link between t........ Read more »

Cosimo Urgesi, Matteo Candidi, Silvio Ionta, & Salvatore M Aglioti. (2006) Representation of body identity and body actions in extrastriate body area and ventral premotor cortex. Nature Neuroscience, 10(1), 30-31. DOI: 10.1038/nn1815

C. Urgesi, B. Calvo-Merino, P. Haggard, & S. M. Aglioti. (2007) Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Reveals Two Cortical Pathways for Visual Body Processing. Journal of Neuroscience, 27(30), 8023-8030. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0789-07.2007

October 16, 2008
02:29 PM
1,249 views

Speech recognition and the left hemisphere: Task matters!

by Greg Hickok in Talking Brains

I fully agree with Dorte Hessler's assessment that left hemisphere damage can produce significant "problems to identify or discriminate speech sounds in the absence of hearing deficits." But here is the critical point that David and I have been harping on since 2000: the ability to explicitly identify or discriminate speech sounds (e.g., say whether /ba/ & /pa/ are the same or different) on the one hand, and the ability to implicitly discriminate speech sounds (e.e., recognize that bear refers........ Read more »

Elizabeth Bates, Stephen M. Wilson, Ayse Pinar Saygin, Frederic Dick, Martin I. Sereno, Robert T. Knight, & Nina F. Dronkers. (2003) Voxel-based lesion–symptom mapping. Nature Neuroscience. DOI: 10.1038/nn1050

S Blumstein, W Cooper, E Zurif, & A Caramazza. (1977) The perception and production of Voice-Onset Time in aphasia. Neuropsychologia, 15(3), 371-372. DOI: 10.1016/0028-3932(77)90089-6

G Hickok, & D Poeppel. (2000) Towards a functional neuroanatomy of speech perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4(4), 131-138. DOI: 10.1016/S1364-6613(00)01463-7

Gregory Hickok, & David Poeppel. (2007) The cortical organization of speech processing. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 8(5), 393-402. DOI: 10.1038/nrn2113

G MICELI, G GAINOTTI, C CALTAGIRONE, & C MASULLO. (1980) Some aspects of phonological impairment in aphasia*1. Brain and Language, 11(1), 159-169. DOI: 10.1016/0093-934X(80)90117-0

February 19, 2009
02:28 PM
1,240 views

Reflections on mirror neurons and speech perception

by Greg Hickok in Talking Brains

In the very first empirical report of mirror neurons di Pellegrino, Fadiga, Gallese, & Rizzolatti (1992) noted the surface similarity between mirror neurons and the motor theory of speech perception. [the invariance of the acoustic patterns of speech] led several authors to propose that the objects of speech perception were to be found not in the sound, but in the phonetic gesture of the speaker, represented in the brain as invariant motor commands (see Liberman and Mattingly 1985). Although our........ Read more »

G. Pellegrino, L. Fadiga, L. Fogassi, V. Gallese, & G. Rizzolatti. (1992) Understanding motor events: a neurophysiological study. Experimental Brain Research, 91(1). DOI: 10.1007/BF00230027

Andrew J. Lotto, Gregory S. Hickok, & Lori L. Holt. (2009) Reflections on mirror neurons and speech perception. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2008.11.008

December 10, 2008
04:10 PM
1,198 views

Stuttering, the planum temporale, and delayed auditory feedback

by Greg Hickok in Talking Brains

This is a follow up to my previous post on the (reduced) effect of delayed auditory feedback (DAF) in conduction aphasia. Here we consider the possible relation between anatomical abnormalities in the planum temporale and DAF in stutterers. Paradoxically, DAF can improve fluency in people who stutter (it decreases fluency in control subjects). Some stutterers also have an anatomically atypical planum temporale. A study published in Neurology by Foundas et al. (2004) sought to determine wheth........ Read more »

A. L. Foundas, MD, A. M. Bollich, PhD, J. Feldman, MD, D. M. Corey, PhD, M. Hurley, PhD, L. C. Lemen, PhD and K. M. Heilman, MD. (2004) Aberrant auditory processing and atypical planum temporale in developmental stuttering. Neurology, 1640-1646. DOI: http://www.neurology.org/cgi/content/abstract/63/9/1640?maxtoshow

Gregory Hickok, Bradley Buchsbaum, Colin Humphries, & Tugan Muftuler. (2003) Auditory–Motor Interaction Revealed by fMRI: Speech, Music, and Working Memory in Area Spt. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 15(5), 673-682. DOI: 10.1162/089892903322307393

M LINCOLN, A PACKMAN, & M ONSLOW. (2006) Altered auditory feedback and the treatment of stuttering: A review. Journal of Fluency Disorders, 31(2), 71-89. DOI: 10.1016/j.jfludis.2006.04.001

September 25, 2008
02:08 PM
1,192 views

Broca's area, sentence comprehension, and working memory

by Greg Hickok in Talking Brains

Broca's area shows a "sentence complexity" effect. It responds more during the comprehension of object relative (OR) constructions than easier to process subject relative (SR) constructions:OR: The man that the boy pushes is wearing a red shirtSR: The man that pushes the boy is wearing a red shirtWhat is driving the complexity effect? Presumably it is some form of working memory. In the case of OR sentences, you have to hold two items in memory -- the man, the boy -- before you get to the ver........ Read more »

David Caplan, Nathaniel Alpert, Gloria Waters, & Anthony Olivieri. (2000) Activation of Broca's area by syntactic processing under conditions of concurrent articulation. Human Brain Mapping, 9(2), 65-71. DOI: 10.1002/(SICI)1097-0193(200002)9:23.0.CO;2-4

February 20, 2009
11:33 AM
1,178 views

Lip reading involves two cortical mechansims

by Greg Hickok in Talking Brains

It is well known that visual speech (lip reading) affects auditory perception of speech. But how? There seem to be two ideas. One idea, dominant among sensory neuroscientists, is that visual speech accesses auditory speech systems via cross sensory integration. The STS is a favorite location in this respect. The other, dominant among speech scientists, particularly those with a motor theory bent, is that visual speech accesses motor representations of the perceived gestures which then influen........ Read more »

K OKADA, & G HICKOK. (2009) Two cortical mechanisms support the integration of visual and auditory speech: A hypothesis and preliminary data. Neuroscience Letters. DOI: 10.1016/j.neulet.2009.01.060

September 11, 2008
04:28 PM
1,169 views

Do right motor cortex lesions cause verb processing impairments?

by Greg Hickok in Talking Brains

I'm still looking for compelling evidence that damage to the motor system affects verb processing. TMS data was not convincing, nor was ALS data (see previous posts). Now I'm looking at a lesion study by Neininger & Pulvermuller (2003, Word-category specific deficits after lesions in the right hemisphere. Neuropsychologia, 41:53-70), and I have to admit this is a reasonably impressive result -- but not exactly air tight. Twelve patients with right frontal lobe damage and left hemiparesis were........ Read more »

B Neininger. (2003) Word-category specific deficits after lesions in the right hemisphere. Neuropsychologia, 41(1), 53-70. DOI: 10.1016/S0028-3932(02)00126-4

April 21, 2009
02:06 PM
1,167 views

Einstein's brain: anomalous auditory/language dorsal stream

by Greg Hickok in Talking Brains

A forthcoming paper in Frontiers in Evolutionary Neuroscience by Dean Falk shows that Albert Einstein's brain had some rare anatomical anomalies involving language-related sensory-motor areas, regions I consider to be part of the auditory "dorsal stream" -- or more accurately, the vocal-tract sensory-motor integration circuit (Hickok & Poeppel, 2007; Pa & Hickok, 2008). Falk suggests that these anomalies may be related to Einstein's reported delay in language development as well as to his self-r........ Read more »

Hickok, G., Okada, K., & Serences, J. (2008) Area Spt in the Human Planum Temporale Supports Sensory-Motor Integration for Speech Processing. Journal of Neurophysiology, 101(5), 2725-2732. DOI: 10.1152/jn.91099.2008

Hickok, G., & Poeppel, D. (2007) The cortical organization of speech processing. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 8(5), 393-402. DOI: 10.1038/nrn2113

PA, J., & HICKOK, G. (2008) A parietal–temporal sensory–motor integration area for the human vocal tract: Evidence from an fMRI study of skilled musicians. Neuropsychologia, 46(1), 362-368. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.06.024

March 3, 2009
06:41 PM
1,147 views

Neural mechanisms underlying auditory feedback control of speech

by Greg Hickok in Talking Brains

Auditory feedback is an important aspect of speech production. Delayed auditory feedback results in non-fluencies, and altered speech feedback, e.g., shifting fundamental frequency, results in compensatory speech adjustments opposite the direction of the alteration. What is the neural mechanism underlying this system? That was the question addressed in a recent report by Tourville, Reilly, & Guenther (2008).The design of their fMRI experiment was straightforward. Subjects produced words under........ Read more »

J TOURVILLE, K REILLY, & F GUENTHER. (2008) Neural mechanisms underlying auditory feedback control of speech. NeuroImage, 39(3), 1429-1443. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.09.054

October 2, 2008
05:57 PM
1,139 views

More evidence for a sensory-motor interface in the posterior planum temporale region (area Spt)

by Greg Hickok in Talking Brains

We have argued previously that the posterior-medial planum temporale is not part of auditory cortex, but instead is multisensory and subserves sensory-motor integration, much like sensory-motor integration areas in the parietal lobe (Pa & Hickok, 2008). (See also a previous post on the topic.) A new paper by Novraj Dhanjal, Richard Wise, and colleagues in J. Neurosci. provides additional evidence for this view. In an fMRI experiment, they had subjects produce speech (either count or produce pr........ Read more »

N. S. Dhanjal, L. Handunnetthi, M. C. Patel, & R. J. S. Wise. (2008) Perceptual Systems Controlling Speech Production. Journal of Neuroscience, 28(40), 9969-9975. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2607-08.2008

Troy A. Hackett, Lisa A. De La Mothe, Istvan Ulbert, George Karmos, John Smiley, & Charles E. Schroeder. (2007) Multisensory convergence in auditory cortex, II. Thalamocortical connections of the caudal superior temporal plane. The Journal of Comparative Neurology, 502(6), 924-952. DOI: 10.1002/cne.21326

J PA, & G HICKOK. (2008) A parietal–temporal sensory–motor integration area for the human vocal tract: Evidence from an fMRI study of skilled musicians. Neuropsychologia, 46(1), 362-368. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.06.024

April 16, 2009
09:12 PM
1,123 views

Broca's area: It's a dessert topping! No it's a floor wax! No it's a cognitive control mechanism!

by Greg Hickok in Talking Brains

Debates over the function of Broca's area remind me of the old Saturday Night Live skit where a husband (Dan Aykroyd) and wife (Gilda Radner) are arguing about whether a product, "New Shimmer" is a dessert topping or a floor wax: Wife: New Shimmer is a floor wax! Husband: No, new Shimmer is a dessert topping! Wife: It's a floor wax! Husband: It's a dessert topping! Wife: It's a floor wax, I'm telling you! The spokesman (Chevy Chase) quickly enters at this point and says: Hey, hey, hey, calm dow........ Read more »

NOVICK, J., TRUESWELL, J., & THOMPSON-SCHILL, S. (2005) Cognitive control and parsing: Reexamining the role of Broca's area in sentence comprehension. Cognitive, Affective, , 5(3), 263-281. DOI: 10.3758/CABN.5.3.263

January 8, 2009
12:50 PM
1,101 views

Functional organization of the planum temporale

by Greg Hickok in Talking Brains

This is the title of a talk I'm giving at the Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience Society meeting tomorrow in Tucson. What I'm going to argue is that there is no such thing. Let me explain...The planum temporale is a gross anatomical feature. Although it is often referred to and studied as a functional region -- e.g., The Planum Temporale as a Computational Hub (Griffiths and Warren, 2002) among many other papers -- there is no evidence to support this view. Cytoarchitectonic data indicate at le........ Read more »

T Griffiths, & J Warren. (2002) The planum temporale as a computational hub. Trends in Neurosciences, 25(7), 348-353. DOI: 10.1016/S0166-2236(02)02191-4

October 14, 2008
07:08 PM
1,100 views

Does Parkinson's disease impair action verb processing?

by Greg Hickok in Talking Brains

I've been slogging through the evidence typically cited as support for an embodied cognition view of language processing. Much of this research focuses on processing actions verbs, which according to the "EC" view, critically involve motor representations as part of their semantics. In previous posts I've discussed studies that use TMS, ALS, and stroke data to make the case for an embodied view of action word processing. None of it, I argued, was particularly compelling. Here we have a close ........ Read more »

Boulenger, V., Mechtouff, L., Thobois, S., Broussolle, E., Jeannerrod, M., & Nazir, T.A. (2008) Word processing in Parkinson's disease is impaired for action verbs but not for concrete nouns. Neuropsychologia, 46(2), 743-756. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.10.007

Argye E. Hillis, Elizabeth Tuffiash, & Alfonso Caramazza. (2002) Modality-Specific Deterioration in Naming Verbs in Nonfluent Primary Progressive Aphasia. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14(7), 1099-1108. DOI: 10.1162/089892902320474544

September 11, 2008
05:00 PM
1,067 views

Lipstick on a pig: a neural perspective

by Greg Hickok in Talking Brains

Abstract. Purpose: To investigate the effects of political party affiliation on the interpretation of metaphoric expressions. Approach: Millions of subjects were exposed to a single metaphor, "You can put lipstick on a pig -- It's still a pig" and were asked to indicate the intended referent of the word, "pig." Data collection and analysis: Response data were collected via tedious monitoring of television news channels, particularly CNN, where interpretations of "pig" were offered (repeatedly) b........ Read more »

Z EVIATAR, & M JUST. (2006) Brain correlates of discourse processing: An fMRI investigation of irony and conventional metaphor comprehension. Neuropsychologia, 44(12), 2348-2359. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2006.05.007

Ingo G. Meister, Dorothee Buelte, Roland Sparing, & Babak Boroojerdi. (2007) A repetition suppression effect lasting several days within the semantic network. Experimental Brain Research, 183(3), 371-376. DOI: 10.1007/s00221-007-1051-8

A RAPP, Leube DT, Erb M, Grodd W, & Kircher TT. (2004) Neural correlates of metaphor processing. Cognitive Brain Research, 20(3), 395-402. DOI: 10.1016/j.cogbrainres.2004.03.017

M SHIBATA, J ABE, A TERAO, & T MIYAMOTO. (2007) Neural mechanisms involved in the comprehension of metaphoric and literal sentences: An fMRI study. Brain Research, 92-102. DOI: 10.1016/j.brainres.2007.06.040

A STRINGARIS, N MEDFORD, V GIAMPIETRO, M BRAMMER, & A DAVID. (2007) Deriving meaning: Distinct neural mechanisms for metaphoric, literal, and non-meaningful sentences. Brain and Language, 100(2), 150-162. DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2005.08.001

December 10, 2008
03:08 PM
1,065 views

Conduction aphasia and delayed auditory feedback

by Greg Hickok in Talking Brains

Here's an interesting nugget of information: conduction aphasics appear to be less susceptible to the disruptive effect of delayed auditory feedback. Why is this interesting? Because it is more evidence for a link between systems supporting auditory-motor interaction and the deficit in conduction aphasia. Here are the details...Delayed auditory feedback (DAF) disrupts speech production. You can prove this to yourself either by trying to talk on a microphone in a large stadium (where your ech........ Read more »

F Boller, & P Marcie. (1978) Possible role of abnormal auditory feedback in conduction aphasia. Neuropsychologia, 16(4), 521-524. DOI: 10.1016/0028-3932(78)90078-7

G Hickok, et al. (2000) A functional magnetic resonance imaging study of the role of left posterior superior temporal gyrus in speech production: implications for the explanation of conduction aphasia. Neuroscience Letters, 287(2), 156-160. DOI: 10.1016/S0304-3940(00)01143-5

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