Evidence map›Paper›PMID 25632073›Full record

ArticleJournal of neurophysiology2015

The superior precentral gyrus of the insula does not appear to be functionally specialized for articulation.

Evelina Fedorenko, Paul Fillmore, Kimberly Smith, Leonardo Bonilha, Julius Fridriksson

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Journal of neurophysiology, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
21citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

21 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Trial
  2. Article
  3. Using unsupervised dimensionality reduction to identify lesion patterns predictive of post-stroke aphasia severity.Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior · 2025
    Article
  4. Article
  5. Reading reshapes stimulus selectivity in the visual word form area.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024
    Article
  6. Review
  7. Article
  8. Spatiotemporally distributed frontotemporal networks for sentence reading.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023
    Article
  9. Article
  10. Article
  11. Article
  12. Neural Representations of the Voice Tremor Spectrum.Movement disorders : official journal of the Movement Disorder Society · 2020
    Article
  13. Article
  14. Article
  15. Connectivity of the human insula: A cortico-cortical evoked potential (CCEP) study.Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior · 2019
    Article
  16. Article
  17. Article
  18. Functional Characterization of the Human Speech Articulation Network.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2018
    Article
  19. Article
  20. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors.

Evelina FedorenkoMassachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts; evelina.fedorenko@mgh.harvard.edu.
Paul FillmoreUniversity of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina; and.
Kimberly SmithUniversity of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina; and.
Leonardo BonilhaMedical University of South Carolina, Charlestown, South Carolina.
Julius FridrikssonUniversity of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina; and.

Funding

Cortical and Subcortical Organization of Language-Related Semantic Processing in Alzheimer's DiseaseR01DC014021 · NIDCD · UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA AT COLUMBIA · PI BONILHA, LEONARDO F · 2014 to 2023
$4.7M
A Unified Neuroanatomical Model of Speech Production and Perception: ImplicationsR01DC009571 · NIDCD · UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA AT COLUMBIA · PI FRIDRIKSSON, JULIUS, RORDEN, CHRISTOPHER · 2009 to 2013
$1.6M
fMRI investigations of the functional architecture of the language systemR00HD057522 · NICHD · MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL · PI FEDORENKO, EVELINA · 2014 to 2016
$738k
fMRI investigations of the functional architecture of the language systemK99HD057522 · NICHD · MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY · PI FEDORENKO, EVELINA · 2009 to 2010
$160k
NICHD NIH HHS HD-057522NICHD NIH HHS K99 HD057522NICHD NIH HHS R00 HD057522NIDCD NIH HHS DC-009571NIDCD NIH HHS R01 DC014021
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Broca (Broca P. Bull Soc Anat Paris 36: 330-357, 1861) influentially argued that posterior left inferior frontal gyrus supports speech articulation. According to an alternative proposal (e.g., Dronkers NF. Nature 384: 159-161, 1996; Wise RJ, Greene J, Buchel C, Scott SK. Lancet 353: 1057-1061, 1999; Baldo JV, Wilkins DP, Ogar J, Willock S, Dronkers NF. Cortex 47: 800-807, 2011), a region in the anterior insula [specifically, the superior precentral gyrus of the insula (SPGI)] is the seat of articulatory abilities. Moreover, Dronkers and colleagues have argued that the SPGI is functionally specialized for (complex) speech articulation. Here, we evaluate this claim using individual-subject functional MRI (fMRI) analyses (e.g., Fedorenko E, Hsieh PJ, Nieto-Castanon A, Whitfield-Gabrieli S, Kanwisher N. J Neurophysiol 104: 1177-1194, 2010). We find that the SPGI responds weakly, if at all, during articulation (parts of Broca's area respond 3-4 times more strongly) and does not show a stronger response to higher articulatory demands. This holds regardless of whether the SPGI is defined functionally (by selecting the most articulation-responsive voxels in the vicinity of the SPGI in each subject individually) or anatomically (by using masks drawn on each individual subject's anatomy). Critically, nonspeech oral movements activate the SPGI more strongly than articulation, especially under the anatomical definition of the SPGI. In line with Hillis et al. (Hillis AE, Work M, Barker PB, Jacobs MA, Breese EL, Maurer K. Brain 127: 1479-1487, 2004; also Trupe L, Varma DD, Gomez Y, Race D, Leigh R, Hillis AE, Gottesman RF. Stroke 44: 740-744, 2013), we argue that previous links between the SPGI, and perhaps anterior insula more generally, and articulation may be due to its high base rate of ischemic damage (and activation in fMRI; Yarkoni T, Poldrack RA, Nichols TE, Van Essen DC, Wager TD. Nat Methods 8: 665-670, 2011), combined with its proximity to regions that more directly support speech articulation, such as the precentral gyrus or the posterior aspects of the inferior frontal gyrus (Richardson JD, Fillmore P, Rorden C, Lapointe LL, Fridriksson J. Brain Lang 123: 125-130, 2012), and thus susceptibility to joint damage.

Indexed as

Brain MappingAdultFemaleFrontal LobeHumansMaleNerve NetSpeecharticulationBroca's areafMRIinsulaSPGI

Identifiers

PMID25632073
PMCPMC4416598

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.