Speech was found in the motor cortex of the brain. Free Technical Library News

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Speech found in the motor cortex

27.12.2019

We know that the brain is divided into zones that each specialize in their own function: for example, the hippocampus is the center of memory and orientation in the locality, the visual cortex processes signals from the eyes, etc. Recently, we hear every now and then that the most specialized areas of the brain - at least some of them - may well take on extraneous work, and the same visual cortex may well begin to "see" sounds.

Researchers at Stanford have shown a rather interesting example of how we can be surprised by some area of the cerebral cortex that we are accustomed to associate with a certain function. Among the convolutions of the cortex is the so-called anterior central gyrus, which controls movements, and various zones within this gyrus are specialized in the movement of a certain part of the body. Initially, Sergey Stavisky and his colleagues worked with paralyzed people who, using electrodes implanted in the brain, recorded the activity of neurons in the motor areas of the brain in order to improve the performance of brain-computer interfaces that translate brain signals into the movement of cursors on the screen or into movements of artificial arms and legs.

There is a neural center in the anterior central gyrus that controls the hand and forearm, and electrodes were also implanted into it. And so the researchers at some point became interested in whether this center is involved in any other activity, in addition to controlling the hands. According to some data obtained from earlier experiments, the "manual" center worked when a person said something. And now, when people with electrodes were asked to pronounce some words or just speech sounds, the neurons of the "manual" center were activated. Moreover, their activity differed depending on what exactly the person was saying, so that the work of this center could determine with some probability what was said: for one person, it was possible to guess the word from neural signals in 85% of cases, for another - at 55%.

Although neuroscientists have suspected that non-speech areas of the brain are associated with speech before, now they have managed to show this with all evidence. Why speech resonates in the region that governs the hand and shoulder is not entirely clear yet. Obviously, it is not necessary for speech - it is known from medical cases that a person may well speak even when the "manual" center of the anterior central gyrus is damaged and does not work at all. Perhaps he participates in some very special aspects of speech; perhaps he begins to participate in speech only in special circumstances - after all, now experiments were set up with paralyzed patients who lost their mobility after a back injury. One way or another, the new results once again demonstrate that the idea of the specialization of the brain areas is to some extent conditional.

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