What Part Of The Brain Controls Speech

Why Nosotros're Non Always Tongue-Tied

A task as elementary as speaking on the telephone relies on the coordinated control of different rima oris and facial muscles. (Image credit: Dreamstime)

Spoken language may seem effortless, but it requires a complex dance of the muscles in the lips, jaw, tongue and phonation box. New enquiry reveals the patterns of brain activity that control these finely wrought movements, substantially keeping people from being perpetually tongue-tied.

The wide diverseness of sounds in American English are produced by combining just a small fix of movements, researchers reported online today (Feb. 20) in the journal Nature. In the study, scientists recorded the activity of neurons in a office of the brain chosen the sensorimotor cortex, which coordinates muscle movements, while people pronounced various syllables. Researchers measured brain activity using electrodes placed on the surface of the brain as role of a clinical handling for epilepsy.

The results showed that the activity patterns of large populations of cells corresponded in infinite and fourth dimension to certain phonetic features.

In essence, the scientists take charted a map of the encephalon's somatosensory cortex for specific facial and oral body parts, computational neuroscientist Nicho Hatsopoulos of the University of Chicago, who was not involved in the study, told LiveScience. Furthermore, the timing of action in dissimilar brain areas is important, Hatsopoulos said. "You lot see activity in one office that might stand for the lips or tongue, and then later in time, another area gets activated."

The resulting brain activeness is like a carefully tuned orchestra; each instrument section generates a specific sound, and those sounds are coordinated to produce the overall symphony.

The researchers' map of different vocal regions in the encephalon mirrored the layout of the vocal tract. They found an additional region, representing the voice box (the larynx), which is not present in not-human primates. The area could be a unique man specialization for speech, the researchers say.

Previous studies take shown that merely stimulating one spot in the brain cannot produce speech sounds. Rather, spoken language requires the concerted activity of many unlike neurons, as the new written report confirms.

The speech features found in the study aren't unique to English, but define many other languages besides, hinting that humans evolved to have these characteristics. Further fine-tuning of the speech features may give dissimilar languages their unique sounds.

Beyond helping in agreement how the encephalon works, this enquiry could ultimately lead to the evolution of brain-motorcar interfaces that could decode what a person with facial paralysis is trying to say, Hatsopoulos said.

Tanya was a staff author for Live Scientific discipline from 2013 to 2015, covering a broad assortment of topics, ranging from neuroscience to robotics to strange/cute animals. She received a graduate certificate in scientific discipline advice from the Academy of California, Santa Cruz, and a bachelor of science in biomedical engineering science from Brown University. She has previously written for Science News, Wired, The Santa Cruz Lookout, the radio testify Big Picture Science and other places. Tanya has lived on a tropical island, witnessed volcanic eruptions and flown in zilch gravity (without losing her lunch!). To find out what her latest project is, y'all can visit her website.