Shared and distinct neural correlates of vowel perception and production Krystyna Grabski a, * , Jean-Luc Schwartz a , Laurent Lamalle b, c , Coriandre Vilain a , Nathalie Vallée a , Monica Baciu d , Jean-François Le Bas b, e , Marc Sato a, * a Gipsa-Lab, Département Parole & Cognition, UMR CNRS 5216 & Grenoble Université, France b Structure Fédérative de Recherche n  1 “RMN Biomédicale et Neurosciences”– Unité IRM 3T Recherche, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Grenoble, France c INSERM, France d Laboratoire de Psychologie et Neurocognition, UMR CNRS 5105 & Université Pierre Mendès France, France e Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Grenoble, France article info Article history: Received 19 November 2012 Accepted 25 November 2012 Keywords: Speech perception Speech production Sensorimotor interactions Phonetic features Mirror system fMRI Sparse sampling abstract Recent neurobiological models postulate that sensorimotor in- teractions play a key role in speech perception and speech motor control, especially under adverse listening conditions or in case of complex articulatory speech sequences. The present fMRI study aimed to investigate whether isolated vowel perception and pro- duction might also induce sensorimotor activity, independently of syllable sequencing and coarticulation mechanisms and using a sparse acquisition technique in order to limit influence of scan- ner noise. To this aim, participants first passively listened to French vowels previously recorded from their own voice. In a subsequent production task, done within the same imaging session and using the same acquisition parameters, participants were asked to overtly produce the same vowels. Our results demonstrate that a left postero-dorsal stream, linking auditory speech percepts with articulatory representations and including the posterior inferior frontal gyrus, the adjacent ventral premotor cortex and the tem- poroparietal junction, is an influential part of both vowel percep- tion and production. Specific analyses on phonetic features further confirmed the involvement of the left postero-dorsal stream in vowel processing and motor control. Altogether, these results * Corresponding authors. GIPSA-LAB, UMR CNRS 5216, Grenoble Universités, Domaine Universitaire BP 46, 38402 Saint Martin d’Hères cedex, France. Tel.: þ33 04 76 57 50 61; fax: þ33 04 76 57 47 10. E-mail addresses: krystyna.grabski@gipsa-lab.inpg.fr (K. Grabski), marc.sato@gipsa-lab.inpg.fr (M. Sato). Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Journal of Neurolinguistics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ jneuroling 0911-6044/$ – see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jneuroling.2012.11.003 Journal of Neurolinguistics xxx (2013) 384–408