S3). We quantify this effect by calculating the half-maximum decay time of the BOLD response for speech and reversed speech, in each of the ROIs. Note that we

did not include the SCN responses in this analysis because they did not show a clear peak in these regions, and so an analysis of half-maximum decay time would simply pick up noise fluctuations. Figure 5 LIFG responses to reversed speech decay faster than the response to speech. (A) Group-averaged time course of BOLD activation for speech (red) and reversed speech (green) in three functionally defined ROIs. ROIs were defined by Speech versus Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical SCN (P < ... The analysis of half-maximum decay times (Fig. 5B) reveals that in left IFG, but not in temporal ROIs, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical the response to reversed speech decays significantly faster than the response to speech (t (2,20) = 2.53, P < 0.05, Bonferroni corrected for multiple comparisons

across the five ROIs, Fig. 5B). Time course results for bilateral aSTS were qualitatively similar to those found in bilateral pSTS (Fig. S1). We repeated the analysis using an orthogonal contrast (Speech + Reversed vs. Rest) and replicated the decay time effect in left IFG (t (2,20) = 2.77, P < 0.05, not shown), verifying that the effect remains significant regardless of ROI definition. Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical This effect was seen in the majority of our participants (eight out of eleven, Fig. 5C), suggesting that LIFG initially attempts to analyze reversed speech as linguistic input, but gives up once this input is recognized as nonspeech. Discussion We compared two Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical auditory baselines commonly used in functional localizers of speech processing, reversed speech and SCN. While both baselines adequately remove activation in primary auditory cortex, reversed speech removed much of the activation in language regions as well. This effect is detrimental particularly Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical in the left IFG, where only 3 out of 12 participants showed activated

clusters for Speech versus Reversed, compared with 11 participants in the Speech versus SCN contrast. This outcome is not threshold specific (see Fig. S2) but can be directly BIBW2992 solubility dmso attributed to robust overlap between speech and reversed speech responses across the entire speech processing network, predominantly in the left IFG. A closer look at the time course and decay parameters of individual participants (Figs. S3 and ​and5C)5C) Bumetanide provides a possible explanation to this effect: activation in LIFG rises similarly in the speech and reversed conditions, but then decays faster in the reversed condition. This suggests that LIFG attempts to parse reversed speech but then attenuates its response once the input has been recognized as nonlinguistic. Our results have clear practical implications for both clinical and research applications of functional localizers of speech. In the clinical domain (e.g.