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Functional Mapping of Inner Speech Areas: A Preliminary Study with Portuguese Speakers

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Speech and Computer (SPECOM 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 11096))

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Abstract

Inner speech can be defined as the act of talking silently with ourselves. Several studies aimed to understand how this process is related to speech organization and language. Despite the advances, some results are still contradictory. Importantly, language dependency is scarcely studied. For this first study of inner speech for Portuguese native speakers using fMRI, we selected a confrontation naming task, consisting of 40 black and white line drawings. Five healthy participants were instructed to name in inner and in overt speech the visually presented image. fMRI data analysis considering the proposed inner speech paradigm identified several brain areas such as the left inferior frontal gyrus, including Broca’s area, supplementary motor area, precentral gyrus and left middle temporal gyrus including Wernicke’s area. Our results also show more pronounced bilateral activations during the overt speech task when compared to inner speech, suggesting that inner and overt speech activate similar areas but stronger activation can be found in the later. However, this difference stems in particular from significant activation differences in the right pre-central gyrus and middle temporal gyrus.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Nuclear Sciences Applied to Health, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    Carlos Ferreira, Bruno Direito & Alexandre Sayal

  2. CIBIT Coimbra Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Translational Research, ICNAS, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    Carlos Ferreira, Alexandre Sayal, Marco Simões & Miguel Castelo-Branco

  3. Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    Marco Simões & Miguel Castelo-Branco

  4. Center for Informatics and Systems, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    Marco Simões

  5. School of Health Sciences, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal

    Inês Cadório, Paula Martins, Marisa Lousada & Daniela Figueiredo

  6. Center for Health Technology and Services Research, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal

    Inês Cadório, Marisa Lousada & Daniela Figueiredo

  7. Institute of Biomedicine, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal

    Paula Martins

  8. Institute of Electronics and Telematics Engineering of Aveiro (IEETA), Aveiro, Portugal

    Paula Martins & António Teixeira

  9. Department of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal

    António Teixeira

  10. Perspectum Diagnostics, Oxford, UK

    Carlos Ferreira

Authors
  1. Carlos Ferreira
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  2. Bruno Direito
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  3. Alexandre Sayal
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  4. Marco Simões
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  5. Inês Cadório
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  6. Paula Martins
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  7. Marisa Lousada
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  8. Daniela Figueiredo
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  9. Miguel Castelo-Branco
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  10. António Teixeira
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to António Teixeira .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. SPIIRAS, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Alexey Karpov

  2. Leipzig University of Telecommunications, Leipzig, Germany

    Oliver Jokisch

  3. Moscow State Linguistic University, Moscow, Russia

    Rodmonga Potapova

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Ferreira, C. et al. (2018). Functional Mapping of Inner Speech Areas: A Preliminary Study with Portuguese Speakers. In: Karpov, A., Jokisch, O., Potapova, R. (eds) Speech and Computer. SPECOM 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11096. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99579-3_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99579-3_18

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-99578-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-99579-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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