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Brain Advance Access published online on November 5, 2009
Brain, doi:10.1093/brain/awp273
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© The Author(s) 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Brain.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

The left superior temporal gyrus is a shared substrate for auditory short-term memory and speech comprehension: evidence from 210 patients with stroke

Alexander P. Leff1, Thomas M. Schofield1, Jennifer T. Crinion2, Mohamed L. Seghier1, Alice Grogan1,3, David W. Green4 and Cathy J. Price1

1 Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, Institute of Neurology, UCL, London WC1N 3BG, UK 2 Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL, London, WC1N 3AR, UK 3 Department of Human Communication Sciences, University of Sheffield, S10 2TA, UK 4 Research Department of Cognitive, Perceptual and Brain Sciences, UCL, London WC1E 6BT, UK

Correspondence to: Alexander P. Leff, Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, Institute of Neurology, UCL,12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK E-mail: address: a.leff{at}fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk

Competing theories of short-term memory function make specific predictions about the functional anatomy of auditory short-term memory and its role in language comprehension. We analysed high-resolution structural magnetic resonance images from 210 stroke patients and employed a novel voxel based analysis to test the relationship between auditory short-term memory and speech comprehension. Using digit span as an index of auditory short-term memory capacity we found that the structural integrity of a posterior region of the superior temporal gyrus and sulcus predicted auditory short-term memory capacity, even when performance on a range of other measures was factored out. We show that the integrity of this region also predicts the ability to comprehend spoken sentences. Our results therefore support cognitive models that posit a shared substrate between auditory short-term memory capacity and speech comprehension ability. The method applied here will be particularly useful for modelling structure–function relationships within other complex cognitive domains.

Key Words: auditory short-term memory; digit span; speech comprehension; stroke; voxel-based morphometry.

Abbreviations: MNI, Montreal Neurological Institute

Received June 10, 2009. Revised August 25, 2009. Accepted September 16, 2009.


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