Researchers Find Speech Center in the Brain

For years, scientists have debated on whether there is are specific regions in the brain that are dedicated to managing speech.

The new study has now pinpointed the part of the brain that is responsible for processing speech.

The decades old question finally gets some answers with the discovery of the superior temporal sulcus, located in the temporal lobe.

Study senior author David Poeppel, professor in the department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science, in a university news release said, "We now know there is at least one part of the brain that specializes in the processing of speech and doesn't have a role in handling other sounds."

Poeppel and his team of associates conducted brain scans on volunteers who were all made to listen to sounds that ranged from fireworks to dog barks to the ping pong ball.

To make sure that the participants were responding to speech sounds rather than reacting to a familiar language, the researchers also played many German words which none of the volunteers understood.

While all types of sounds caused activity in the auditory cortex of the temporal lobe, only speech related sounds were found to trigger activity in the superior temporal lobe.

It made the scientists come to the conclusion that this part of the brain is used to process speech.