Neural and functional organization of systems involved in representing and learning spoken words. ("a") Left temporal lobe regions involved in perceiving and comprehending spoken words (based on Hickok & Poeppel 2004; Davis & Johnsrude 2007) and their interactions with medial temporal systems for word learning. ("b") Functional organization of the Distributed Cohort Model (Gaskell & Marslen-Wilson 1997, 1999; depicted within the grey box) with additional connections to hippocampal/episodic memory system for learning new words. In both diagrams, rapid cortico-cortico connections are shown with solid lines, and slower, cortico-hippocampal connections are shown with broken lines. Dotted lines with open arrow-heads show recurrent connections involved in maintaining acoustic-phonetic representations in echoic memory.