Data from: Shared and modality-specific brain regions that mediate auditory and visual word comprehension

Visual speech carried by lip movements is an integral part of communication. Yet, it remains unclear in how far visual and acoustic speech comprehension are mediated by the same brain regions. Using multivariate classification of full-brain MEG data, we first probed where the brain represents acoustically and visually conveyed word identities. We then tested where these sensory-driven representations are predictive of participants' trial-wise comprehension. The comprehension-relevant representations of auditory and visual speech converged only in anterior angular and inferior frontal regions and were spatially dissociated from those representations that best reflected the sensory-driven word identity. These results provide a neural explanation for the behavioural dissociation of acoustic and visual speech comprehension and suggest that cerebral representations encoding word identities may be more modality-specific than often upheld.Funding provided by: Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research CouncilCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000268Award Number: BB/L027534/1Funding provided by: European Research CouncilCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000781Award Number: ERC-2014-CoG; grant No 646657Funding provided by: Wellcome TrustCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100004440Award Number: 098433Funding provided by: Deutsche ForschungsgemeinschaftCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001659Award Number: GR 2024/5-1Funding provided by: IZKF*Crossref Funder Registry ID: Award Number: Gro3/001/19Funding provided by: IZKFCrossref Funder Registry ID: Award Number: Gro3/001/1