The Cortical Organization of Phonological Processing

Abstract

Phonological processing refers to mechanisms involved in representing, accessing, or manipulating information related to the sound structure of language. The goal of this chapter is to review what is known about the neural basis of phonological processes in three broad domains: speech recognition, speech production, and verbal short-term memory. In particular, we will outline evidence showing that phonological processing is task dependent, that phonological-level aspects of speech recognition are bilaterally organized (but computationally asymmetric), and that posterior phonological information interacts with frontal motor systems by means of a sensory-motor integration network that supports aspects of speech production and verbal working memory. These findings are organized theoretically into a dual-stream model, which is closely related to dual-stream models proposed in the visual domain.