Samson Y, Belin P, Thivard L, Boddaert N, Crozier S, Zilbovicius M
CEA, DRM, Service Hospitalier Frédéric Joliot, Orsay, France.
Rev Neurol (Paris). 2001 Sep;157(8-9 Pt 1):837-46.
Since the description of cortical deafness, it has been known that the superior temporal cortex is bilaterally involved in the initial stages of language auditory perception but the precise anatomical limits and the function of this area remain debated. Here we reviewed more than 40 recent papers of positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging related to language auditory perception, and we performed a meta-analysis of the localization of the peaks of activation in the Talairach's space. We found 8 studies reporting word versus non-word listening contrasts with 54 activation peaks in the temporal lobes. These peaks clustered in a bilateral and well-limited area of the temporal superior cortex, which is here operationally defined as the speech sensitive auditory cortex. This area is more than 4cm long, located in the superior temporal gyrus and the superior temporal sulcus, both anterior and posterior to Heschl's gyrus. It do not include the primary auditory cortex nor the ascending part of the planum temporale. The speech sensitive auditory cortex is not activated by pure tones, environmental sounds, or attention directed toward elementary components of a sound such as intensity, pitch, or duration, and thus has some specificity for speech signals. The specificity is not perfect, since we found a number of non-speech auditory stimuli activating the speech sensitive auditory cortex. Yet the latter studies always involve auditory perception mechanisms which are also relevant to speech perception either at the level of primitive auditory scene analysis processes, or at the level of specific schema-based recognition processes. The dorsal part of the speech sensitive auditory cortex may be involved in primitive scene analysis processes, whereas distributed activation of this area may contribute to the emergence of a broad class of "voice" schemas and of more specific "speech schemas/phonetic modules" related to different languages. In addition, this area is activated by language-related lip movement, suggesting that a multimodal integration of the auditory and the visual information relevant in speech perception occurs at this level. Finally, there is a task-related top-down modulation of the pattern of activation of the speech sensitive auditory cortex which may reflect the fact that the different parts of this structure are connected to different down-stream cortical regions involved in the neural processing of different types of tasks.
自从皮质性聋被描述以来，人们就知道颞上叶皮质在语言听觉感知的初始阶段双侧参与，但该区域的确切解剖界限和功能仍存在争议。在此，我们回顾了40多篇最近与语言听觉感知相关的正电子发射断层扫描和功能磁共振成像论文，并对Talairach空间中激活峰值的定位进行了荟萃分析。我们发现8项研究报告了单词与非单词听力对比，在颞叶中有54个激活峰值。这些峰值聚集在颞上皮质的双侧且界限分明的区域，在此将其操作性定义为语音敏感听觉皮层。该区域长度超过4厘米，位于颞上回和颞上沟，在Heschl回的前后方。它不包括初级听觉皮层，也不包括颞平面的上升部分。语音敏感听觉皮层不会被纯音、环境声音或对声音基本成分（如强度、音高或持续时间）的注意力所激活，因此对语音信号具有一定的特异性。这种特异性并不完美，因为我们发现一些非语音听觉刺激会激活语音敏感听觉皮层。然而，后一类研究总是涉及与语音感知相关的听觉感知机制，无论是在原始听觉场景分析过程层面，还是在基于特定模式的识别过程层面。语音敏感听觉皮层的背侧部分可能参与原始场景分析过程，而该区域的分布式激活可能有助于与不同语言相关的广泛“声音”模式以及更具体的“语音模式/语音模块”的出现。此外，该区域会被与语言相关的唇动激活，这表明在这个层面发生了语音感知中听觉和视觉信息的多模态整合。最后，语音敏感听觉皮层的激活模式存在与任务相关且自上而下的调制，这可能反映了这样一个事实，即该结构的不同部分与参与不同类型任务神经处理的不同下游皮质区域相连。
