Role of anterior temporal cortex in auditory sentence comprehension: an fMRI study

Recent neuropsychological and functional imaging evidence has suggested a r ole for anterior temporal cortex in sentence-level comprehension. We explor ed this hypothesis using event-related fMRI. Subjects were scanned while th ey listened to either a sequence of environmental sounds describing an even t or a corresponding sentence matched as closely as possible in meaning. Bo th types of stimuli required subjects to integrate auditory information ove r time to derive a similar meaning, but differ in the processing mechanisms leading to the integration of that information, with speech input requirin g syntactic mechanisms and environmental sounds utilizing non-linguistic me chanisms. Consistent with recent claims, sentences produced greater activat ion than environmental sounds in anterior superior temporal lobe bilaterall y. A similar speech>sound activation pattern was noted also in posterior su perior temporal regions in the left. Envirornmental sounds produced greater activation than sentences in right inferior frontal gyrus. The results pro vide support for the view that anterior temporal cortex plays an important role in sentence-level comprehension. NeuroReport 12:1749-1752 (C) 2001 Lip pincott Williams & Wilkins.