# Cortical Dynamics during Speech Production

> **NIH NIH F30** · UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS HLTH SCI CTR HOUSTON · 2020 · $1

## Abstract

Project Summary & Abstract
Hundreds of thousands of people lose the ability to speak each year due to trauma, stroke, neuro-degeneration,
and neoplasms with devastating consequences for social interaction and quality of life. Rehabilitation and
treatment for these patients has been limited by fundamental deficiencies in the understanding of speech
production in the brain – specifically, how distributed cortical substrates coordinate to engender this
sophisticated, fluent, and ubiquitous form of human communication. Discrete cognitive functions identified by the
nature of common speech errors, chronometric studies of picture naming, and patterns of disruption in aphasia
have informed hierarchical psycholinguistic models of neural processes leading from intention to articulation.
Separately, motor control theorists have developed detailed computational models of articulation governed by a
stable neural control system. Neurobiological instantiations of these two categories of speech production models
both implicate a lateralized peri-sylvian network architecture, but no clear consensus has emerged on the
dynamic behavior and functional organization of this network. This work leverages the unique and potent
advantages of human invasive electrocorticography in a large cohort (n = 100) – excellent spatiotemporal
resolution, direct full spectrum recordings, and complete bilateral cortical coverage – to study the rapid, transient
and coordinated neural processes supporting speech production. First, this proposal will assess inter-regional
timing and its dependence on specific response features (e.g. lexical frequency, phonological complexity).
Second, dynamic causal modeling will be used to compare and optimize models of speech production as a
function of parameters with direct neurophysiological significance. Third, direct closed-loop stimulation of
anatomical targets will examine the response of the speech production network to external perturbation. These
experiments will furnish an improved understanding of healthy language function and the breakdown of this
faculty with damage to specific components of the subservient cortical network. Additionally, this work will provide
the PI with the opportunity, training, and guidance to develop into a productive future clinician-scientist.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9894785
- **Project number:** 5F30DC017083-03
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS HLTH SCI CTR HOUSTON
- **Principal Investigator:** Kiefer Forseth
- **Activity code:** F30 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $1
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2018-04-01 → 2020-04-02

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9894785

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9894785, Cortical Dynamics during Speech Production (5F30DC017083-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9894785. Licensed CC0.

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