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[Preprint]. 2025 Jun 6:2025.06.05.658124.
doi: 10.1101/2025.06.05.658124.

Causal Lesion Evidence for Two Motor Speech Coordination Networks in the Brain

William Burns  1 , Emma Strawderman  1   2 , Steven P Meyers  1   3 , Tyler Schmidt  1 , Kevin A Walter  1 , Webster H Pilcher  1 , Bradford Z Mahon  1   4   5 , Frank E Garcea  1   2   6
Affiliations

Causal Lesion Evidence for Two Motor Speech Coordination Networks in the Brain

William Burns et al. bioRxiv. .

Abstract

Speech production is supported by sensory-to-motor transformations to coordinate activity of the larynx and orofacial muscles. Here, we show that lesions to left temporal lobe areas involved in pitch processing cause reduced neural responses when repeating sentences and when humming piano melodies in a dorsal portion of the left precentral gyrus linked to laryngeal motor control. In contrast, lesions to left inferior parietal areas involved in somatosensory processing of speech cause reduced neural responses when repeating sentences but not when humming piano melodies in a ventral portion of the left precentral gyrus linked to orofacial motor control. Analyses in neurotypical participants converge in showing that the dorsal and ventral portions of the left precentral gyrus exhibit strong functional connectivity to left temporal and inferior parietal regions, respectively. These results provide causal lesion evidence that dissociable networks underlie distinct sensory-to-motor transformations supporting laryngeal and orofacial motor control for speech production.

Keywords: functional MRI; left precentral gyrus; left superior temporal gyrus; left supramarginal gyrus; lesion-symptom mapping; melody humming; sentence repetition; speech production.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of interest. BZM is an inventor of IP PCT/US2019/064015 for a process to develop predictive analytics in neurosurgery. BZM is also a co-founder, and Chief Science Officer, of MindTrace Technologies, Inc., which licenses said intellectual property from Carnegie Mellon University.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. Resting state functional connectivity analysis of the dPCSA and vPCSA.
Across both neurotypical participant groups, the dPCSA exhibited stronger functional connectivity to the left superior temporal gyrus (STG), whereas the vPCSA exhibited stronger functional connectivity to the left anterior supramarginal gyrus (aSMG). Error bars represent standard error of the mean computed across participants.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.. ROI analysis of condition and phase in the dorsal and ventral precentral speech areas.
Light bars represent the distribution of contrast-weighted t-values during the listening phase, whereas dark bars represent the distribution of contrast-weighted t-values during the production phase. Across both dPCSA (A, B) and vPCSA (C, D) ROIs, there was considerable overlap in the distribution of values for the listening and reproduction phases of each condition, which explains the lack of significant main effects or interaction effects in the repeated-measures ANOVA.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.. Lesion sites inversely associated with functional neural responses for sentence repetition.
Surface-based (A) and volumetric (B; MNI Z coordinate listed above axial slices) renderings of lesion sites associated with reduced functional neural responses in the dPCSA (red-to-yellow) and the vPCSA (blue-to-green). Common lesion sites are rendered in magenta.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.. Lesion sites inversely associated with functional neural responses for melody humming.
Surface-based (A) and volumetric (B; MNI Z coordinate listed above axial slices) renderings of lesion sites associated with reduced functional neural responses in the dPCSA (red-to-yellow) and the vPCSA (blue-to-green).
Figure 5.
Figure 5.. Overlap between VLAM of sentence repetition and melody humming in the dPCSA.
Surface-based (A) and volumetric (B; MNI Z coordinate listed above axial slices) renderings of the overlapping lesion sites identified in the VLAM analysis of sentence repetition and melody humming in the dPCSA.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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