Luciano Fadiga - Sensorimotor Processing of Language

Despite the resonance evoked by the famous ‘motor theory of speech perception’ conceived by Alvin Liberman almost fifty years ago, a strong debate still survives on the possibility that speech understanding does not rely on sensory processing alone. In my presentation I will provide evidence that Liberman was substantially right and that a motor framework for speech understanding does exist. The sensorimotor association at the basis of speech processing is just an extension of a more general mechanism, as proven by recent TMS data, patients studies, and computational models, all converging in the same direction.