fMRI investigation of unexpected somatosensory feedback perturbation during speech.

Somatosensory feedback plays a critical role in the coordination of articulator movements for speech production. In response to unexpected resistance to lip or jaw movements during speech, fluent speakers can use the difference between the somatosensory expectations of a speech sound and the actual somatosensory feedback to adjust the trajectories of functionally relevant but unimpeded articulators. In an effort to investigate the neural substrates underlying the somatosensory feedback control of speech, we used an event-related sparse sampling functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm and a novel pneumatic device that unpredictably blocked subjects' jaw movements.