Conduction aphasia, sensory-motor integration, and phonological short-term memory – An aggregate analysis of lesion and fMRI data

• Published in: Brain and language Vol. 119; no. 3; pp. 119 - 128
• Main Authors: Buchsbaum, Bradley R., Baldo, Juliana, Okada, Kayoko, Berman, Karen F., Dronkers, Nina, D’Esposito, Mark, Hickok, Gregory
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier Inc 01.12.2011; Elsevier
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Adult and adolescent clinical studies; Aphasia; Aphasia, Conduction - etiology; Aphasia, Conduction - pathology; Biological and medical sciences; Brain - pathology; Brain Hemisphere Functions; Brain lesion; Brain Mapping; Child; Conduction aphasia; Diagnostic Tests; Disorders of higher nervous function. Focal brain diseases. Central vestibular syndrome and deafness. Brain stem syndromes; Error Patterns; Female; Humans; Language Impairments; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Medical sciences; Memory, Short-Term - physiology; Music; Nervous system (semeiology, syndromes); Neurology; Organic mental disorders. Neuropsychology; Patients; Phonological short-term memory; Phonology; Planum temporale; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychomotor Skills; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Sensorimotor integration; Sensory Integration; Short Term Memory; Speech; Speech production; Stroke - complications; Stroke - pathology; Symptoms (Individual Disorders); Task Analysis; Working memory; Young Adult; Conduction aphasia; Speech production; Sensorimotor integration; Brain lesion; Working memory; Phonological short-term memory; Planum temporale; Central nervous system; Cognition; Verbal production; Language disorder; Encephalon; Sensorimotor coordination; Language; Short-term memory; Functional magnetic resonance imaging; Neurological disorder; Human; Nervous system diseases; Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging; Cerebral disorder; Communication disorder; Central nervous system disease; Aphasia; Speech; Phonology; Lesion; Aggregate; Intermodal perception; Functional imaging
• ISSN: 0093-934X; 1090-2155; 1090-2155
• DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2010.12.001

Conduction aphasia is a language disorder characterized by frequent speech errors, impaired verbatim repetition, a deficit in phonological short-term memory, and naming difficulties in the presence of otherwise fluent and grammatical speech output. While traditional models of conduction aphasia have typically implicated white matter pathways, recent advances in lesions reconstruction methodology applied to groups of patients have implicated left temporoparietal zones. Parallel work using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has pinpointed a region in the posterior most portion of the left planum temporale, area Spt, which is critical for phonological working memory. Here we show that the region of maximal lesion overlap in a sample of 14 patients with conduction aphasia perfectly circumscribes area Spt, as defined in an aggregate fMRI analysis of 105 subjects performing a phonological working memory task. We provide a review of the evidence supporting the idea that Spt is an interface site for the integration of sensory and vocal tract-related motor representations of complex sound sequences, such as speech and music and show how the symptoms of conduction aphasia can be explained by damage to this system.