Background: Prosody, the melody and intonation of speech, involves the rhythm, rate, pitch and voice quality to relay linguistic and emotional information from one individual to another. A significant component of human social communication depends upon interpreting and responding to another person's prosodic tone as well as one's own ability to produce prosodic speech. However there has been little work on whether the perception and production of prosody share common neural processes, and if so, how these might correlate with individual differences in social ability. Methods: The aim of the present study was to determine the degree to which perception and production of prosody rely on shared neural systems. Using fMRI, neural activity during perception and production of a meaningless phrase in different prosodic intonations was measured. Regions of overlap for production and perception of prosody were found in premotor regions, in particular the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). Act)