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Description
Language is processed in dual streams with left-hemispheric preference for phonemes and right-hemispheric preference for prosody. In both the phoneme and the prosody network, the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) acts as a main hub transforming continuous acoustic features into discrete perceptual categories. However, the causal role of pSTS and the network’s capacity for flexible redistribution after disruptions remain unclear. In this combined TMS-fMRI study, we induced “virtual lesions” in left or right pSTS of 29 healthy participants before they performed phoneme and prosody identification tasks during 3T-fMRI acquisition. Stimuli were varied in five steps along morphed continua of phoneme (“Bar”/”Paar”) and intonation (question/statement). We used Representational Similarity Analysis to assess and compare how phonemic and prosodic representations are distributed across left and right fronto-temporal regions of interest and how these representations are modified at the network level after focal disruptions of left or right pSTS.