Phonetotopy is the concept that articulatory features as well as perceptual features of speech sounds are ordered in the brain in a similar way as tone (
tonotopy
In physiology, tonotopy (from Greek tono = frequency and topos = place) is the spatial arrangement of where sounds of different frequency are processed in the brain. Tones close to each other in terms of frequency are represented in topologically ...
), articulation and its somatosensory feedback (
somatotopy), or visual location of an object (
retinotopy
Retinotopy () is the mapping of visual input from the retina to neurons, particularly those neurons within the visual stream. For clarity, 'retinotopy' can be replaced with 'retinal mapping', and 'retinotopic' with 'retinally mapped'.
Visual f ...
). It is assumed that a phonetotopic ordering of speech sounds as well as of syllables can be found at a ''supramodal'' speech processing level (i.e. at a ''phonetic'' speech processing level) within the brain.
The concept of phonetotopy was introduced in Kröger et al. (2009) on the basis of modeling speech production, speech perception, as well as speech acquisition. Moreover,
fMRI
Functional magnetic resonance imaging or functional MRI (fMRI) measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow. This technique relies on the fact that cerebral blood flow and neuronal activation are coupled. When an area o ...
measurements on ordering of vowels with respect to phonetic features as well as
EEG-array measurements on vowel and syllable articulation
[Kristofer E. Bouchard KE, Mesgarani N, Johnson K, Chang EF (2013) Functional organization of human sensorimotor cortex for speech articulation. Nature 495, 327–332] support this concept. It underpins the concept of
distinctive features
In linguistics, a distinctive feature is the most basic unit of phonology, phonological structure that distinguishes one Phone (phonetics), sound from another within a language. For example, the feature Voice (phonetics), voice
The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound productio ...
''distinguishes ...
, which are phonetically based features of speech sounds (i.e. based in perceptual as well as in articulatory domain), but which as well are linguistically (or
phonologically
Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often prefer ...
) relevant, and thus are realized in a language specific way in humans.
References
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Neuroscience
Phonetics
Brain