Both sides of brain involved in speech, not just one!

A new study has found that speech comes from both sides of the brain and not one.

The finding by researchers at New York University and NYU Langone Medical Center also offer insights into addressing speech-related inhibitions caused by stroke or injury and lay the groundwork for better rehabilitation methods.

"Our findings upend what has been universally accepted in the scientific community-that we use only one side of our brains for speech," Bijan Pesaran says. "In addition, now that we have a firmer understanding of how speech is generated, our work toward finding remedies for speech afflictions is much better informed."

Many in the scientific community have posited that both speech and language are lateralized-that is, we use only one side of our brains for speech, which involves listening and speaking, and language, which involves constructing and understanding sentences.

However, the conclusions pertaining to speech generally stem from studies that rely on indirect measurements of brain activity, raising questions about characterizing speech as lateralized.

The study relied on data collected at NYU ECoG , a center where brain activity is recorded directly from patients implanted with specialized electrodes placed directly inside and on the surface of the brain while the patients are performing sensory and cognitive tasks.

Here, the researchers examined brain functions of patients suffering from epilepsy by using methods that coincided with their medical treatment.

An analysis of brain activity as patients engaged in speech tasks showed that both sides of the brain were used-that is, speech is, in fact, bi-lateral.

The study is published in the journal Nature.