Ageing diminishes the modulation of human brain responses to visual food cues by meal ingestion.

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Rates of obesity are greatest in middle age. Obesity is associated with altered activity of brain networks sensing food-related stimuli and internal signals of energy balance, which modulate eating behaviour. The impact of healthy mid-life ageing on these processes has not been characterised. We therefore aimed to investigate changes in brain responses to food cues, and the modulatory effect of meal ingestion on such evoked neural activity, from young adulthood to middle age. SUBJECTS/METHODS: Twenty-four healthy, right-handed subjects, aged 19.5-52.6 years, were studied on separate days after an overnight fast, randomly receiving 50 ml water or 554 kcal mixed meal before functional brain magnetic resonance imaging while viewing visual food cues. RESULTS: Across the group, meal ingestion reduced food cue-evoked activity of amygdala, putamen, insula and thalamus, and increased activity in precuneus and bilateral parietal cortex. Corrected for body mass index, ageing was associated with decreasing food cue-evoked activation of right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and precuneus, and increasing activation of left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), bilateral temporal lobe and posterior cingulate in the fasted state. Ageing was also positively associated with the difference in food cue-evoked activation between fed and fasted states in the right DLPFC, bilateral amygdala and striatum, and negatively associated with that of the left orbitofrontal cortex and VLPFC, superior frontal gyrus, left middle and temporal gyri, posterior cingulate and precuneus. There was an overall tendency towards decreasing modulatory effects of prior meal ingestion on food cue-evoked regional brain activity with increasing age. CONCLUSIONS: Healthy ageing to middle age is associated with diminishing sensitivity to meal ingestion of visual food cue-evoked activity in brain regions that represent the salience of food and direct food-associated behaviour. Reduced satiety sensing may have a role in the greater risk of obesity in middle age.

Predicting response to cognitive behavioral therapy in contamination-based obsessive-compulsive disorder from functional magnetic resonance imaging.

BACKGROUND: Although cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an effective treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), few reliable predictors of treatment outcome have been identified. The present study examined the neural correlates of symptom improvement with CBT among OCD patients with predominantly contamination obsessions and washing compulsions, the most common OCD symptom dimension. METHOD: Participants consisted of 12 OCD patients who underwent symptom provocation with contamination-related images during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanning prior to 12 weeks of CBT. RESULTS: Patterns of brain activity during symptom provocation were correlated with a decrease on the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (YBOCS) after treatment, even when controlling for baseline scores on the YBOCS and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and improvement on the BDI during treatment. Specifically, activation in brain regions involved in emotional processing, such as the anterior temporal pole and amygdala, was most strongly associated with better treatment response. By contrast, activity in areas involved in emotion regulation, such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, correlated negatively with treatment response mainly in the later stages within each block of exposure during symptom provocation. CONCLUSIONS: Successful recruitment of limbic regions during exposure to threat cues in patients with contamination-based OCD may facilitate a better response to CBT, whereas excessive activation of dorsolateral prefrontal regions involved in cognitive control may hinder response to treatment. The theoretical implications of the findings and their potential relevance to personalized care approaches are discussed.

Neural correlates of visuospatial working memory in the 'at-risk mental state'.

BACKGROUND: Impaired spatial working memory (SWM) is a robust feature of schizophrenia and has been linked to the risk of developing psychosis in people with an at-risk mental state (ARMS). We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the neural substrate of SWM in the ARMS and in patients who had just developed schizophrenia. METHOD: fMRI was used to study 17 patients with an ARMS, 10 patients with a first episode of psychosis and 15 age-matched healthy comparison subjects. The blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) response was measured while subjects performed an object-location paired-associate memory task, with experimental manipulation of mnemonic load. RESULTS: In all groups, increasing mnemonic load was associated with activation in the medial frontal and medial posterior parietal cortex. Significant between-group differences in activation were evident in a cluster spanning the medial frontal cortex and right precuneus, with the ARMS groups showing less activation than controls but greater activation than first-episode psychosis (FEP) patients. These group differences were more evident at the most demanding levels of the task than at the easy level. In all groups, task performance improved with repetition of the conditions. However, there was a significant group difference in the response of the right precuneus across repeated trials, with an attenuation of activation in controls but increased activation in FEP and little change in the ARMS. CONCLUSIONS: Abnormal neural activity in the medial frontal cortex and posterior parietal cortex during an SWM task may be a neural correlate of increased vulnerability to psychosis.

Neural correlates of movement generation in the 'at-risk mental state'.

OBJECTIVE: People with 'prodromal' symptoms have a very high risk of developing psychosis. We examined the neurocognitive basis of this vulnerability by using functional MRI to study subjects with an at-risk mental state (ARMS) while they performed a random movement generation task. METHOD: Cross-sectional comparison of individuals with an ARMS (n = 17), patients with first episode schizophreniform psychosis (n = 10) and healthy volunteers (n = 15). Subjects were studied using functional MRI while they performed a random movement generation paradigm. RESULTS: During random movement generation, the ARMS group showed less activation in the left inferior parietal cortex than controls, but greater activation than in the first episode group. CONCLUSION: The ARMS is associated with abnormalities of regional brain function that are qualitatively similar to those in patients who have recently presented with psychosis but less severe.

Clinical and anatomical heterogeneity in autistic spectrum disorder: a structural MRI study.

BACKGROUND: Autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by stereotyped/obsessional behaviours and social and communicative deficits. However, there is significant variability in the clinical phenotype; for example, people with autism exhibit language delay whereas those with Asperger syndrome do not. It remains unclear whether localized differences in brain anatomy are associated with variation in the clinical phenotype. METHOD: We used voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to investigate brain anatomy in adults with ASD. We included 65 adults diagnosed with ASD (39 with Asperger syndrome and 26 with autism) and 33 controls who did not differ significantly in age or gender. RESULTS: VBM revealed that subjects with ASD had a significant reduction in grey-matter volume of medial temporal, fusiform and cerebellar regions, and in white matter of the brainstem and cerebellar regions. Furthermore, within the subjects with ASD, brain anatomy varied with clinical phenotype. Those with autism demonstrated an increase in grey matter in frontal and temporal lobe regions that was not present in those with Asperger syndrome. CONCLUSIONS: Adults with ASD have significant differences from controls in the anatomy of brain regions implicated in behaviours characterizing the disorder, and this differs according to clinical subtype.

To discard or not to discard: the neural basis of hoarding symptoms in obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Preliminary neuroimaging studies suggest that patients with the 'compulsive hoarding syndrome' may be a neurobiologically distinct variant of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) but further research is needed. A total of 29 OCD patients (13 with and 16 without prominent hoarding symptoms) and 21 healthy controls of both sexes participated in two functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments consisting of the provocation of hoarding-related and symptom-unrelated (aversive control) anxiety. In response to the hoarding-related (but not symptom-unrelated) anxiety provocation, OCD patients with prominent hoarding symptoms showed greater activation in bilateral anterior ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) than patients without hoarding symptoms and healthy controls. In the entire patient group (n=29), provoked anxiety was positively correlated with activation in a frontolimbic network that included the anterior VMPFC, medial temporal structures, thalamus and sensorimotor cortex. Negative correlations were observed in the left dorsal anterior cingulate gyrus, bilateral temporal cortex, bilateral dorsolateral/medial prefrontal regions, basal ganglia and parieto-occipital regions. These results were independent from the effects of age, sex, level of education, state anxiety, depression, comorbidity and use of medication. The findings are consistent with the animal and lesion literature and several landmark clinical features of compulsive hoarding, particularly decision-making difficulties. Whether the results are generalizable to hoarders who do not meet criteria for OCD remains to be investigated.

The role of 'shared representations' in social perception and empathy: an fMRI study.

Evidence suggests that we use the same mechanisms for both producing and perceiving actions. Such 'shared representations' may also underlie social perception and empathy. However, this idea raises some important and as yet unresolved questions: (i) how do we distinguish other-orientated empathic responses from a self-orientated reactions such as personal distress and (ii) what are the neural substrates underpinning these processes? We employed event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore whether 'shared representations' were recruited to decode dynamic social stimuli in 12 healthy volunteers. We used an adapted version of the Profile of Non-Verbal Sensitivity (Rosenthal, H., Hall, J.A., DiMatteo, M.R., Rogers, P.L., Archer, D., (1979). Sensitivity to nonverbal communication: the PONS test. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore) which taps social perception using brief silent video clips. Participants chose one of two words that best described the state conveyed by the actor, or in the control condition using the same clips, the word describing which parts of the body were visible (non-social labelling). Off-line self-report measures of empathy and personal distress engendered by thoughts about others, were also given along with an experimentally-derived index of the degree of self-other overlap during social perception. Brain activation specific to the main experimental condition was found in the inferior frontal gyrus (BA44) and premotor areas (BA6) consistent with the use of 'shared representations'. Somatosensory areas such as the insula and supramarginal gyrus (BA40) were also activated suggesting that participants constructed a qualitative representation of the target state. Activity in the rostral anterior cingulate was associated with self-reports of personal distress and increased blood flow to the anterior cingulate (BA24) and inferior parietal cortex (BA40) was related to self-other overlap.

Cognitive modulation of the cerebral processing of human oesophageal sensation using functional magnetic resonance imaging.

BACKGROUND: While cortical processing of visceral sensation has been described, the role that cognitive factors play in modulating this processing remains unclear. AIM: To investigate how selective and divided attention modulate the cerebral processing of oesophageal sensation. METHODS: In seven healthy volunteers (six males, mean age 33 years; ranging from 24 to 41 years old) from the general community, phasic visual and oesophageal (non-painful balloon distension) stimuli were presented simultaneously. During the selective attention task, subjects were instructed to press a button either to a change in frequency of oesophageal or visual stimuli. During a divided attention task, subjects received simultaneous visual and oesophageal stimuli and were instructed to press a button in response to a change in frequency of both stimuli. RESULTS: Selectively focussing attention on oesophageal stimuli activated the visceral sensory and cognitive neural networks (primary and secondary sensory cortices and anterior cingulate cortex respectively) while selective attention to visual stimuli primarily activated the visual cortex. When attention was divided between the two sensory modalities, more brain regions in the sensory and cognitive domains were utilised to process oesophageal stimuli in comparison to those employed to process visual stimuli (p=0.003). CONCLUSION: Selective and divided attention to visceral stimuli recruits more neural resources in both the sensory and cognitive domains than attention to visual stimuli. We provide neurobiological evidence that demonstrates the biological importance placed on visceral sensations and demonstrate the influence of cognitive factors such as attention on the cerebral processing of visceral sensation.

Ketamine alters neural processing of facial emotion recognition in healthy men: an fMRI study.

Disruption of facial emotion perception occurs in neuropsychiatric disorders where the expression of emotion is dulled or blunted, for example depersonalization disorder and schizophrenia. It has been suggested that, in the clinical context of emotional blunting, there is a shift in the relative contribution of brain regions subserving cognitive and emotional processing. The non-competitive glutamate receptor antagonist ketamine produces such emotional blunting in healthy subjects. Therefore, we hypothesised that in healthy subjects ketamine would elicit neural responses to emotional stimuli which mimicked those reported in depersonalization disorder and schizophrenia. Thus, we predicted that ketamine would produce reduced activity in limbic and visual brain regions involved in emotion processing, and increased activity in dorsal regions of the prefrontal cortex and cingulate gyrus, both associated with cognitive processing and, putatively, with emotion regulation. Measuring BOLD signal change in fMRI, we examined the neural correlates of ketamine-induced emotional blunting in eight young right-handed healthy men receiving an infusion of ketamine or saline placebo while viewing alternating 30 s blocks of faces displaying fear versus neutral expressions. The normal pattern of neural response occurred in limbic and visual cortex to fearful faces during the placebo infusion. Ketamine abolished this: significant BOLD signal change was demonstrated only in left visual cortex. However, with ketamine, neural responses were demonstrated to neutral expressions in visual cortex, cerebellum and left posterior cingulate gyrus. Emotional blunting may be associated with reduced limbic responses to emotional stimuli and a relative increase in the visual cortical response to neutral stimuli.

Effects of verbal working memory load on corticocortical connectivity modeled by path analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging data.

We investigated the hypothesis that there are load-related changes in the integrated function of frontoparietal working memory networks. Functional magnetic resonance imaging time-series data from 10 healthy volunteers performing a graded n-back verbal working memory task were modeled using path analysis. Seven generically activated regions were included in the model: left/right middle frontal gyri (L/R MFG), left/right inferior frontal gyri (L/R IFG), left/right posterior parietal cortex (L/R PPC), and supplementary motor area (SMA). The model provided a good fit to the 1-back (chi(2) = 7.04, df = 8, P = 0.53) and 2-back conditions (chi(2) = 9.35, df = 8, P = 0.31) but not for the 3-back condition (chi(2) = 20.60, df = 8, P = 0.008). Model parameter estimates were compared overall among conditions: there was a significant difference overall between 1-back and 2-back conditions (chi(2)(diff) = 74.77, df = 20, P < 0.001) and also between 2-back and 3-back conditions (chi(2)(diff) = 96.28, df = 20, P < 0.001). Path coefficients between LIFG and LPPC were significantly different from zero in both 1-back and 2-back conditions; in the 2-back condition, additional paths from LIFG to LPPC via SMA and to RMFG from LMFG and LPPC were also nonzero. This study demonstrated a significant change in functional integration of a neurocognitive network for working memory as a correlate of increased load. Enhanced inferior frontoparietal and prefrontoprefrontal connectivity was observed as a correlate of increasing memory load, which may reflect greater demand for maintenance and executive processes, respectively.

Reversed lateralization of temporal activation during speech production in thought disordered patients with schizophrenia.

BACKGROUND: Formal thought disorder is a core symptom of schizophrenia. It is associated with a reversed lateralization of the superior temporal cortex volume, an area that is implicated in lexical retrieval. We investigated the neural correlates of word retrieval during continuous speech in patients with formal thought disorder using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). METHODS: Blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) contrast was measured with fMRI while six patients with schizophrenia and six healthy control subjects spoke about seven Rorschach inkblots for 3 min each. Subjects produced varying amounts of speech during each run. In a within subject design, the number of words produced was correlated with the BOLD contrast in the two runs in each participant who showed the highest variance of speech output. RESULTS: In control subjects, the amount of speech produced was mainly correlated with activation in the left superior temporal gyrus. In the patient group, the main correlations were in the right superior temporal gyrus. CONCLUSIONS: During the production of continuous speech, patients with formal thought disorder showed a reversed laterality of activation in the superior temporal cortex. This is consistent with findings of perturbed hemispheric interaction in schizophrenia, particularly in patients with formal thought disorder.

Arousal dissociates amygdala and hippocampal fear responses: evidence from simultaneous fMRI and skin conductance recording.

The experience and appraisal of threat is essential to human and animal survival. Lesion evidence suggests that the subjective experience of fear relies upon amygdala-medial frontal activity (as well as autonomic arousal), whereas the factual context of threat stimuli depends upon hippocampal-lateral frontal activity. This amygdala-hippocampus dissociation has not previously been demonstrated in vivo. To explore this differentiation, we employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and simultaneous skin conductance response (SCR) measures of phasic arousal, while subjects viewed fearful versus neutral faces. fMRI activity was subaveraged according to whether or not the subject evoked an arousal SCR to each discrete face stimulus. The fMRI-with arousal and fMRI-without arousal data provided a distinct differentiation of amygdala and hippocampal networks. Amygdala-medial frontal activity was observed only with SCRs, whereas hippocampus-lateral frontal activity occurred only in the absence of SCRs. The findings provide direct evidence for a dissociation between human amygdala and hippocampus networks in the visceral experience versus declarative fact processing of fear.

Differential frontal activation in schizophrenia and bipolar illness during verbal fluency.

INTRODUCTION: The precise nature of frontal lobe dysfunction in schizophrenia remains unclear. We have previously demonstrated, using fMRI, a task-specific attenuation of frontal activation in schizophrenic patients. By using an identical methodology in matched bipolar subjects, we sought to determine whether this finding is specific to schizophrenia or a correlate of psychosis in general. METHOD: Five dextral male bipolar patients and matching groups of schizophrenic subjects and controls were studied using fMRI. Echoplanar images were acquired while subjects performed two paced tasks: covert verbal fluency and a semantic decision task. Generic brain activation maps were constructed from individual images by sinusoidal regression analysis. Between-group differences in the mean power of experimental response were identified on a voxel-wise basis by an analysis of variance (ANOVA). RESULTS: The bipolar patients showed extensive prefrontal activation during verbal fluency which was significantly greater than in controls. There was no difference in the prefrontal BOLD response during the semantic decision task. CONCLUSIONS: These data indicate that bipolar patients show a strikingly different pattern of frontal responses compared to those with schizophrenia and provide further evidence that abnormal frontal activation in psychotic disorders is more apparent during verbal fluency than semantic decision.

An fMRI study of reduced left prefrontal activation in schizophrenia during normal inhibitory function.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to investigate the hypothesis that schizophrenia is associated with a dysfunction of prefrontal brain regions during motor response inhibition. Generic brain activation of six male medicated patients with schizophrenia was compared to that of seven healthy comparison subjects matched for sex, age, and education level while performing 'stop' and 'go-no-go' tasks. No group differences were observed in task performance. Patients, however, showed reduced BOLD signal response in left anterior cingulate during both inhibition tasks and reduced left rostral dorsolateral prefrontal and increased thalamus and putamen BOLD signal response during stop task performance. Despite good task performance, patients with schizophrenia thus showed abnormal neural network patterns of reduced left prefrontal activation and increased subcortical activation when challenged with motor response inhibition.

Modality specific neural correlates of auditory and somatic hallucinations.

Somatic hallucinations occur in schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, although auditory hallucinations are more common. Although the neural correlates of auditory hallucinations have been described in several neuroimaging studies, little is known of the pathophysiology of somatic hallucinations. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to compare the distribution of brain activity during somatic and auditory verbal hallucinations, occurring at different times in a 36 year old man with schizophrenia. Somatic hallucinations were associated with activation in the primary somatosensory and posterior parietal cortex, areas that normally mediate tactile perception. Auditory hallucinations were associated with activation in the middle and superior temporal cortex, areas involved in processing external speech. Hallucinations in a given modality seem to involve areas that normally process sensory information in that modality.

Cortical substrates for the perception of face actions: an fMRI study of the specificity of activation for seen speech and for meaningless lower-face acts (gurning).

Can the cortical substrates for the perception of face actions be distinguished when the superficial visual qualities of these actions are very similar? Two fMRI experiments are reported. Compared with watching the face at rest, observing silent speech was associated with bilateral activation in a number of temporal cortical regions, including the superior temporal sulcus (STS). Watching face movements of similar extent and duration, but which could not be construed as speech (gurning; Experiment 1b) was not associated with activation of superior temporal cortex to the same extent, especially in the left hemisphere. Instead, the peak focus of the largest cluster of activation was in the posterior part of the inferior temporal gyrus (right, BA 37). Observing silent speech, but not gurning faces, was also associated with bilateral activation of inferior frontal cortex (BA 44 and 45). In a second study, speechreading and observing gurning faces were compared within a single experiment, using stimuli which comprised the speaker's face and torso (and hence a much smaller image of the speaker's face and facial actions). There was again differential engagement of superior temporal cortex which followed the pattern of Experiment 1. These findings suggest that superior temporal gyrus and neighbouring regions are activated bilaterally when subjects view face actions--at different scales--that can be interpreted as speech. This circuitry is not accessed to the same extent by visually similar, but linguistically meaningless actions. However, some temporal regions, such as the posterior part of the right superior temporal sulcus, appear to be common processing sites for processing both seen speech and gurns.

Neural correlates of formal thought disorder in schizophrenia: preliminary findings from a functional magnetic resonance imaging study.

BACKGROUND: Formal thought disorder (FTD) is a core symptom of schizophrenia, but its pathophysiology is little understood. We examined the neural correlates of FTD using functional magnetic resonance imaging. METHODS: Blood oxygenation level-dependent contrast was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging while 6 patients with schizophrenia and 6 control subjects spoke about 7 Rorschach inkblots for 3 minutes each. In patients, varying degrees of thought-disordered speech were elicited during each "run." In a within-subject design, the severity of positive FTD was correlated with the level of blood oxygenation level-dependent contrast in the 2 runs that showed the highest variance of FTD in each patient. RESULTS: The severity of positive FTD in patients was negatively correlated (P<.001) with signal changes in the left superior and middle temporal gyri. Positive correlations were evident in the cerebellar vermis, the right caudate body, and the precentral gyrus. CONCLUSIONS: The severity of positive FTD was inversely correlated with the level of activity in the Wernicke area, a region implicated in the production of coherent speech. Reduced activity in this area might contribute to the articulation of incoherent speech. Because of the small sample size, these findings should be considered preliminary.

Detection of audio-visual integration sites in humans by application of electrophysiological criteria to the BOLD effect.

Electrophysiological studies in nonhuman primates and other mammals have shown that sensory cues from different modalities that appear at the same time and in the same location can increase the firing rate of multisensory cells in the superior colliculus to a level exceeding that predicted by summing the responses to the unimodal inputs. In contrast, spatially disparate multisensory cues can induce a profound response depression. We have previously demonstrated using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that similar indices of crossmodal facilitation and inhibition are detectable in human cortex when subjects listen to speech while viewing visually congruent and incongruent lip and mouth movements. Here, we have used fMRI to investigate whether similar BOLD signal changes are observable during the crossmodal integration of nonspeech auditory and visual stimuli, matched or mismatched solely on the basis of their temporal synchrony, and if so, whether these crossmodal effects occur in similar brain areas as those identified during the integration of audio-visual speech. Subjects were exposed to synchronous and asynchronous auditory (white noise bursts) and visual (B/W alternating checkerboard) stimuli and to each modality in isolation. Synchronous and asynchronous bimodal inputs produced superadditive BOLD response enhancement and response depression across a large network of polysensory areas. The most highly significant of these crossmodal gains and decrements were observed in the superior colliculi. Other regions exhibiting these crossmodal interactions included cortex within the superior temporal sulcus, intraparietal sulcus, insula, and several foci in the frontal lobe, including within the superior and ventromedial frontal gyri. These data demonstrate the efficacy of using an analytic approach informed by electrophysiology to identify multisensory integration sites in humans and suggest that the particular network of brain areas implicated in these crossmodal integrative processes are dependent on the nature of the correspondence between the different sensory inputs (e.g. space, time, and/or form).

Differential activation of temporal cortex during sentence completion in schizophrenic patients with and without formal thought disorder.

The neural correlates of processing linguistic context in schizophrenic patients with formal thought disorder (FTD) were examined. Six right-handed male patients with prominent 'positive' FTD were compared with six schizophrenic patients without FTD and seven volunteers, matched for cognitive and demographic variables. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (IMRI) was used to measure cerebral activation while subjects read and completed sentence stems out loud. During a GENERATION condition, subjects were required to generate a word which completed the sentence stem appropriately. During a DECISION condition, subjects selected and articulated one of two presented terminal words. A READING condition served as baseline. The three conditions were compared with each other. Regions activated were identified in each group, and between-group differences were detected using an ANCOVA. When GENERATION was compared with READING, FTD patients showed less activation in the right superior temporal gyrus than patients without FTD or controls, but greater activation in the left inferior frontal, inferior temporal and fusiform gyri. FTD patients also showed an attenuated right temporal response when GENERATION was compared with DECISION. This differential engagement of the right temporal cortex was independent of differences in the speed or accuracy of responses, whereas the left fronto-temporal differences in activation were not evident after covarying for task errors. The attenuated engagement of right temporal cortex, which is implicated in language comprehension at the discourse level, is consistent with neuropsychological evidence linking thought disorder with deficits in processing linguistic context.

Dispersed activation in the left temporal cortex for speech-reading in congenitally deaf people.

Does the lateral temporal cortex require acoustic exposure in order to become specialized for speech processing? Six hearing participants and six congenitally deaf participants, all with spoken English as their first langugage, were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging while performing a simple speech-reading task. Focal activation of the left lateral temporal cortex was significantly reduced in the deaf group compared with the hearing group. Activation within this region was present in individual deaf participants, but varied in location from person to person. Early acoustic experience may be required for regions within the left temporal cortex in order to develop into a coherent network with subareas devoted to specific speech analysis functions.