During the period from 2006 to 2012, research in speech neural systems foregrounded sensorimotor integration as a central mechanism underlying both speech perception and production. Premotor and frontal–temporal circuits were repeatedly implicated, with gesture–speech coupling and embodied processing driving left-lateralized sensorimotor networks. The superior temporal sulcus and surrounding temporal cortex emerged as key substrates for lexical-phonological access and intelligibility, while reading and cross-modal mapping linked visual word processing to temporal language areas via ventral and dorsal routes. Across development, word learning and consolidation moved beyond infancy to encompass adults, revealing evolving lexical representations and stabilization of new spoken words. Historical Significance: This era shifted the field away from purely auditory accounts toward action-oriented, sensorimotor theories of speech, favoring oscillatory dynamics as organizing principles for speech networks. Evidence that premotor cortex plays an essential role in speech perception reframed perceptual decoding as a motorly grounded process, setting the stage for motor-speech models and neuroprosthetic ambitions. Breakthrough demonstrations showed that speech features could be reconstructed from activity in nonprimary auditory cortex and that phonemic content could be decoded from invasive brain signals, providing concrete neural bridges between perception and production and catalyzing subsequent advances in speech neuroprostheses and cross-modal decoding.