Zoe Weston, Amy E. Ramage, Charles Larson, Kittie Verdolini-Abbott, Simon Eickhoff, Donald A. Robin

Vocal control is critical to human communication. Studies have used a variety of neuroimaging techniques to investigate the neural correlates of vocal control using a variety of paradigms including auditory perturbation tasks. As a whole, these studies have provided substantial evidence to the critical role of the Superior Temporal Gyrus (STG) in vocal control especially in regard to error detection/correction during vocalization. The aims of this study were to 1) Use Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) analysis to substantiate the neural regions activation during vocalization; 2) To determine the functional significance of the neural regions activated during vocalization, as characterized by the BrainMap database; 3) To parcellate the bilateral STG by means of Connectivity Based Parcellation (CBP) and functionally characterize discrete subregions and their functional significance. Results of the vocalization ALE analysis revealed activation of the bilateral STG, right SMA, bilateral precentral gyrus, right inferior frontal gyrus, right pallidum, left putamen and right cerebellum (VI), which largely substantiates previous findings of the vocalization network. Results of CBP revealed six distinct subregions of the left and right STG, with major functional characterization in the domains of perception, action, and cognition and in the specific tasks of music production and stimulus monitoring/discrimination. Overall, these findings highlight the important and dynamic role of the STG in vocal control.