The neural mechanism by which patients spontaneously recover cognitive function after brain injury is not understood. Here we demonstrate for the first time that aphasic patients, who have largely recovered language function, show increased frontoparietal integration. A similar change in functional connectivity is also observed when normal subjects are exposed to adverse listening conditions. Thus, compensation for inefficient language processing is associated with increased integration between parts of the language network critical to language control. This change reflects greater top-down control of speech comprehension and provides a mechanism by which language impairments after stroke may be compensated for.