The aim of the present study was to uncover a possible common neural organizing principle in spoken and written communication, through the coupling of perceptual and motor representations. In order to identify possible shared neural substrates for processing the basic units of spoken and written language, a sparse sampling fMRI acquisition protocol was performed on the same subjects in two experimental sessions with similar sets of letters being read and written and of phonemes being heard and orally produced. We found evidence of common premotor regions activated in spoken and written language, both in perception and in production. The location of those brain regions was confined to the left lateral and medial frontal cortices, at locations corresponding to the premotor cortex, inferior frontal cortex and supplementary motor area. Interestingly, the speaking and writing tasks also appeared to be controlled by largely overlapping networks, possibly indicating some domain general cognitive processing. Finally, the spatial distribution of individual activation peaks further showed more dorsal and more left-lateralized premotor activations in written than in spoken language.

中文翻译：

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口头和书面交流中的共享运动前活动

本研究的目的是通过感知和运动表征的耦合，揭示口头和书面交流中可能的共同神经组织原则。为了识别用于处理口语和书面语言基本单位的可能共享神经基质，在两个实验阶段对相同的受试者进行了稀疏采样 fMRI 采集协议，其中读取和写入的字母集相似，音素被听到和口服生产。我们发现了口头和书面语言中常见的运动前区在感知和生产中被激活的证据。这些大脑区域的位置仅限于左侧和内侧额叶皮层，对应于前运动皮层、下额叶皮层和辅助运动区。有趣的是，口语和写作任务似乎也受大部分重叠网络的控制，这可能表明某些领域的一般认知处理。最后，与口语相比，个体激活峰的空间分布进一步显示，书面语中更多的背侧和更多的左侧运动前激活。