Activation of Auditory Cortex During Silent Lipreading

• DOI: 10.1126/science.276.5312.593
• Publication Date: 2002-07-27T09:45:15Z
• Authors: Gemma A. Calvert; Edward T. Bullmore; Michael J. Brammer; Ruth Campbell; Steven C. R. Will...; Philip K. McGuire; Peter W. R. Woodruff; Susan D. Iversen; Anthony S. David
• Keywords: Neurocomputational speech processing; Auditory perception

Watching a speaker’s lips during face-to-face conversation (lipreading) markedly improves speech perception, particularly in noisy conditions. With functional magnetic resonance imaging it was found that these linguistic visual cues are sufficient to activate auditory cortex normal hearing individuals the absence of sounds. Two further experiments suggest cortical areas not engaged when an individual is viewing nonlinguistic facial movements but appear be activated by silent meaningless speechlike (pseudospeech). This supports psycholinguistic evidence seen influences perception heard at prelexical stage.