Mohammad Darainy ¹, Shahabeddin Vahdat ², David J. Ostry ^1,3

¹ Department of Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H3A 1B1

² Functional Neuroimaging Unit, University of Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3W 1W5

 ³Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, Connecticut 06511

In recent publications there is increasing evidence showing that there are changes to sensory systems following motor learning and there are likewise changes to the motor system after perceptual training. It is fair to say, we may not have pure motor or sensory learning after all but rather what we have is in fact sensorimotor learning. In this talk I present our recent work on neural bases of speech motor learning. We used resting-state brain fMRI to measure changes in functional connectivity that occur in conjunction with speech motor learning. In our behavioral part of the experiment we obtained indices of motor and perceptual change associated with learning. We found persistent changes in networks involving both motor and somatosensory areas of the brain. Some of these networks correlate more with the motor index while the other correlate more with the perceptual index.