Duraivel, K.; Rahimpour, S.; Barth, K.; Chiang, C.-H.; Wang, C.; Harward, S.; Lad, N.; Sexton, D.; Friedman, A.; Southwell, D.; Sinha, S.; Viventi, J.; Cogan, G. B.

The neural basis of speech production involves the rapid transition from abstract planning of speech units such as syllables and phonemes, to the motor execution of speech sounds. Although a distributed network of brain regions has been implicated in speech production overall, it is unclear how the brain transitions from planning to execution for speech production. Leveraging the high spatio-temporal resolution of intracranial recordings, we find evidence for neural mechanisms that operate in space and time across the prefrontal and premotor cortices to facilitate the transition from planning to execution. During this execution, we show evidence for motor sequencing from neural activity that tracks both phonological units as well as the transition between them, suggesting both discrete elements from planning as well as continuous motor transitions. We demonstrate temporally-resolved neural mechanisms for the transition between planning and execution to facilitate speech production.