Networks for phonological and semantic processing in auditory language comprehension

Introduction: The aim of our study was to explore the cortical network structure of phonological and semantic processing during auditory language comprehension. Methods: 33 healthy subjects (mean age 34±16 y; 22 male; 17 right-handed) performed an event-related fMRI comprehension task. Participants were asked to listen to a total of 270 aurally presented sentences of normal speech (SP), pseudo speech (PS) and reversed speech (REV). Contrasting PS vs. REV was expected to activate areas mainly responsible for phonological processing (C1) while contrasting SP vs. PS to activate areas involved in semantic processing…