Relationship between speech and other oromotor behaviors

The production of speech is a complex process that implies coordinating various muscular structures in an accurate, efficient and automatic manner. It is widely accepted that oromotor behaviors that do not produce a speech output per se, such as whistling or repeating sequences of syllables at a fast rate, require the use of the same effectors as those involved during the production of words or non-words. However, although producing speech and related oromotor tasks might imply muscular overlap, this is not necessarily translated in the recruitment of similar neural networks. Models hypothesizing about the relationship between speech and other oromotor behaviors have proposed two different views on this regard: on one hand, the integrative model suggests that the cortical neural tissue involved in the production of speech and of other related oromotor tasks overlap to some degree given their embedment into a general motor control system. On the other hand, the task dependent model argues for separate motor control systems for speech and novel oromotor behaviors, which is reflected in the activation of different brain networks. Throughout this thesis I aim at further exploring the relationship between speech and other oromotor tasks, such as sounded orofacial movements and diadochokinetic tasks