Superior Temporal Gyrus

Bilateral STG organize phonological recognition of speech (Hickok 2009)

• Bilateral damage may cause auditory verbal agnosia, or, pure word deafness (poor comprehension of verbal words with preserved reading comprehension and hearing)

• Lesions in left STG may lead to deficits in word recognition, though this is primarily on the semantic rather than phonological level (Hickok 2009)

• Left STG may be more involved in temporal phonological processing and right with spectral (frequency) processing (Zatorre, Belin, Penhune, 2002)

Left dorsal posterior STG / supramarginal gyrus is associated with conduction aphasia (good comprehension and fluent speech but poor repetition) (Hickok 2009)

References

Hickok, G. The functional neuroanatomy of language. Phys. Life Rev. 6, 121–143 (2009). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20161054/

Zatorre, R. J., Belin, P. & Penhune, V. B. Structure and function of auditory cortex: music and speech. Trends Cogn. Sci. 6, 37–46 (2002). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11849614/