A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study of the Role of Left Posterior Superior Temporal Gyrus in Speech Production: Implications for the Explanation of Conduction Aphasia

Conduction aphasia, characterized by good auditory comprehension and fluent but disordered speech production, is classically viewed as a disconnection syndrome. We review recent evidence which suggests that at least one form of conduction aphasia results from damage to cortical fields in the left posterior superior temporal gyrus which participate not only in speech perception, but also in phonemic aspects of speech production. As a test of this hypothesis, we carried out a 4T functional magnetic resonance imaging study in which subjects named visually presented objects sub-vocally. Group-based analyses showed that a majority of participants showed activation in two regions on the dorsal portion of the left posterior superior temporal gyrus.