Lesion and fMRI data

doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2010.12.001

Title: Conduction aphasia, sensory-motor integration, and phonological short-term memory – An aggregate analysis of lesion and fMRI data

Authors: Bradley R. Buchsbaum, Juliana Baldo, Kayoko Okada, Karen F. Berman, Nina Dronkers, Mark D’Esposito, Gregory Hickok

Brain and Language. December 2011, Volume119(Issue3) Page p.119To-128

Abstract
Conduction aphasia is a language disorder characterized by frequent speech errors, impaired verbatim repetition, a deficit in phonological short-term memory, and naming difficulties in the presence of otherwise fluent and grammatical speech output. While traditional models of conduction aphasia have typically implicated white matter pathways, recent advances in lesions reconstruction methodology applied to groups of patients have implicated left temporoparietal zones. Parallel work using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has pinpointed a region in the posterior most portion of the left planum temporale, area Spt, which is critical for phonological working memory. Here we show that the region of maximal lesion overlap in a sample of 14 patients with conduction aphasia perfectly circumscribes area Spt, as defined in an aggregate fMRI analysis of 105 subjects performing a phonological working memory task. We provide a review of the evidence supporting the idea that Spt is an interface site for the integration of sensory and vocal tract-related motor representations of complex sound sequences, such as speech and music and show how the symptoms of conduction aphasia can be explained by damage to this system.

Keywords
Conduction aphasia, Working memory, Speech production, Planum temporale, Brain lesion, Sensorimotor integration, Phonological short-term memory