Abstract

Abstract The precise neural mechanisms underlying speech perception are still to a large extent unknown. The most accepted view is that speech perception depends on auditory‐cognitive mechanisms specifically devoted to the analysis of speech sounds. An alternative view is that, crucial for speech perception, it is the activation of the articulatory (motor) gestures that generate these sounds. The listener understands the speaker when his/her articulatory gestures are activated (motor theory of speech perception). Here, by using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), we demonstrate that, during speech listening, there is an increase of motor‐evoked potentials recorded from the listeners' tongue muscles when the presented words strongly involve, when pronounced, tongue movements. Although these data do not prove the motor theory of speech perception, they demonstrate for the first time that word listening produces a phoneme specific activation of speech motor centres.

Keywords

Motor theory of speech perceptionNeurocomputational speech processingGestureActive listeningPerceptionTranscranial magnetic stimulationSpeech perceptionPsychologySpeech productionTongueSpeech recognitionCognitive psychologyCommunicationNeuroscienceComputer scienceStimulationLinguisticsArtificial intelligence

MeSH Terms

Acoustic StimulationElectric StimulationEvoked PotentialsMotorHumansMagneticsSpeech PerceptionTongue

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Publication Info

Year
2002
Type
article
Volume
15
Issue
2
Pages
399-402
Citations
832
Access
Closed

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Cite This

Luciano Fadiga, Laila Craighero, Giovanni Buccino et al. (2002). Speech listening specifically modulates the excitability of tongue muscles: a TMS study. European Journal of Neuroscience , 15 (2) , 399-402. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.0953-816x.2001.01874.x

Identifiers

DOI
10.1046/j.0953-816x.2001.01874.x
PMID
11849307

Data Quality

Data completeness: 81%