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Updated: Jun 26, 2026

Stimulating the Lip Motor Cortex with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
Published on: June 14, 2014
The somatotopy of speech: phonation and articulation in the human motor cortex
Steven Brown1, Angela R Laird, Peter Q Pfordresher
1Department of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada. stebro@mcmaster.ca
Abstract:
A sizable literature on the neuroimaging of speech production has reliably shown activations in the orofacial region of the primary motor cortex. These activations have invariably been interpreted as reflecting "mouth" functioning and thus articulation. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare an overt speech task with tongue movement, lip movement, and vowel phonation. The results showed that the strongest motor activation for speech was the somatotopic larynx area of the motor cortex, thus reflecting the significant contribution of phonation to speech production. In order to analyze further the phonatory component of speech, we performed a voxel-based meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies of syllable-singing (11 studies) and compared the results with a previously-published meta-analysis of oral reading (11 studies), showing again a strong overlap in the larynx motor area. Overall, these findings highlight the under-recognized presence of phonation in imaging studies of speech production, and support the role of the larynx motor cortex in mediating the "melodicity" of speech.
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