scholarly journals fMRI of Past Tense Processing: The Effects of Phonological Complexity and Task Difficulty

2006 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 278-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rutvik Desai ◽  
Lisa L. Conant ◽  
Eric Waldron ◽  
Jeffrey R. Binder
Keyword(s):  
Response Selection ◽  
Superior Temporal Gyrus ◽  
Small Region ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Integrated System ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Single System ◽  
System View ◽  
Fmri Study ◽  
Phonological Complexity

The generation of regular and irregular past tense verbs has been an important issue in cognitive science and has been used to advance different models of the organization of language in the brain. The dual-system view holds that the regular past tense forms are generated by a rule while irregular forms are retrieved from memory. The single-system view, on the other hand, holds that both forms are generated by a single integrated system and differ only in their reliance on factors such as phonology and semantics. We conducted an event-related fMRI study to examine the activation patterns associated with the generation and reading of regular and irregular past tense forms, in addition to the reading of their stems. Regular and irregular past tense generation activated similar brain regions compared to the reading of their respective stems. The areas activated more for irregular generation compared to regular generation included inferior frontal, precentral, and parietal regions bilaterally. This activation can be interpreted as reflecting the greater attentional and response selection demands of irregular generation. Compared to irregular generation, regular generation activated a small region in the left superior temporal gyrus when the regular and irregular past tense forms were mismatched on phonological complexity. No areas were more activated for regulars than irregulars when the past tense forms were matched on this variable. This suggests that the activation specific to regulars was related to the higher phonological complexity of their past tense forms rather than to their generation. A contrast of the reading of regular and irregular past tense forms was consistent with this hypothesis. These results support a single-system account of past tense generation.

scholarly journals Brain Regions Involved in Underlying Syntactic Processing of Mandarin Chinese Intransitive Verbs: An fMRI Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 983
Author(s):  
Xin Wang ◽  
Shiwen Feng ◽  
Tongquan Zhou ◽  
Renyu Wang ◽  
Guowei Wu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Superior Temporal Gyrus ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Syntactic Processing ◽  
Neural Processing ◽  
Fmri Study ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Intransitive Verbs ◽  
Syntactic Properties ◽  
Passive Verbs

According to the Unaccusative Hypothesis, intransitive verbs are divided into unaccusative and unergative ones based on the distinction of their syntactic properties, which has been proved by previous theoretical and empirical evidence. However, debate has been raised regarding whether intransitive verbs in Mandarin Chinese can be split into unaccusative and unergative ones syntactically. To analyze this theoretical controversy, the present study employed functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare the neural processing of deep unaccusative, unergative sentences, and passive sentences (derived structures undergoing a syntactic movement) in Mandarin Chinese. The results revealed no significant difference in the neural processing of deep unaccusative and unergative sentences, and the comparisons between passive sentences and the other sentence types revealed activation in the left superior temporal gyrus (LSTG) and the left middle frontal gyrus (LMFG). These findings indicate that the syntactic processing of unaccusative and unergative verbs in Mandarin Chinese is highly similar but different from that of passive verbs, which suggests that deep unaccusative and unergative sentences in Mandarin Chinese are both base-generated structures and that there is no syntactic distinction between unaccusative and unergative verbs in Mandarin Chinese.

scholarly journals Cortical Regions Involved in the Generation of Musical Structures during Improvisation in Pianists

2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 830-842 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara L. Bengtsson ◽  
Mihály Csíkszentmihályi ◽  
Fredrik Ullén
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Response Selection ◽  
Premotor Cortex ◽  
Posterior Part ◽  
Superior Temporal Gyrus ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Dorsolateral Prefrontal ◽  
The Right ◽  
Musical Creation

Studies on simple pseudorandom motor and cognitive tasks have shown that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and rostral premotor areas are involved in free response selection. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate whether these brain regions are also involved in free generation of responses in a more complex creative behavior: musical improvisation. Eleven professional pianists participated in the study. In one condition, Improvise, the pianist improvised on the basis of a visually displayed melody. In the control condition, Reproduce, the participant reproduced his previous improvisation from memory. Participants were able to reproduce their improvisations with a high level of accuracy, and the contrast Improvise versus Reproduce was thus essentially matched in terms of motor output and sensory feedback. However, the Improvise condition required storage in memory of the improvisation. We therefore also included a condition FreeImp, where the pianist improvised but was instructed not to memorize his performance. To locate brain regions involved in musical creation, we investigated the activations in the Improvise-Reproduce contrast that were also present in FreeImp contrasted with a baseline rest condition. Activated brain regions included the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the presupplementary motor area, the rostral portion of the dorsal premotor cortex, and the left posterior part of the superior temporal gyrus. We suggest that these regions are part of a network involved in musical creation, and discuss their possible functional roles.

A Cortical Network Sensitive to Stimulus Salience in a Neutral Behavioral Context Across Multiple Sensory Modalities

2002 ◽  
Vol 87 (1) ◽  
pp. 615-620 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Downar ◽  
Adrian P. Crawley ◽  
David J. Mikulis ◽  
Karen D. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Response Selection ◽  
Inferior Frontal Gyrus ◽  
Superior Temporal Gyrus ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Behavioral Context ◽  
General Role ◽  
Sensory Stimuli ◽  
Tactile Stimuli ◽  
Stimulus Salience

Stimulus salience depends both on behavioral context and on other factors such as novelty and frequency of occurrence. The temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) responds preferentially to behaviorally relevant stimuli and is thought to play a general role in detecting salient stimuli. If so, it should respond preferentially to novel or infrequent events, even in a neutral behavioral context. To test this hypothesis, we used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify brain regions sensitive to the novelty of visual, auditory, and tactile stimuli during passive observation. Cortical regions with a greater response to novel than familiar stimuli across all modalities were identified at two sites in the TPJ region: the supramarginal gyrus (SMG) and superior temporal gyrus. The right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), right anterior insula, left anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and left inferior temporal gyrus also showed sensitivity to novelty. The novelty-sensitive TPJ activation in SMG overlaps a region previously identified as sensitive behavioral context. This region may play a general role in identifying salient stimuli, whether the salience is due to the current behavioral context or not. The IFG activation overlaps regions previously identified as responsive to nonnovel sensory events regardless of behavioral context. The IFG may therefore play a general role in stimulus evaluation rather than a specific role in identifying novel stimuli. The ACC activation lies in a region active during complex response-selection tasks, suggesting a general role in detecting and/or planning responses to salient events. A frontal-parietal-cingulate network may serve to identify and evaluate salient sensory stimuli in general.

Action Sentences Activate Sensory Motor Regions in the Brain Independently of Their Status of Reality

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (7) ◽  
pp. 1363-1376 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel de Vega ◽  
Inmaculada León ◽  
Juan A. Hernández ◽  
Mitchell Valdés ◽  
Iván Padrón ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Processing ◽  
Superior Temporal Gyrus ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Extrastriate Body Area ◽  
Fmri Study ◽  
Concrete Action ◽  
One Step ◽  
Linguistic Structures ◽  
The Brain

Some studies have reported that understanding concrete action-related words and sentences elicits activations of motor areas in the brain. The present fMRI study goes one step further by testing whether this is also the case for comprehension of nonfactual statements. Three linguistic structures were used (factuals, counterfactuals, and negations), referring either to actions or, as a control condition, to visual events. The results showed that action sentences elicited stronger activations than visual sentences in the SMA, extending to the primary motor area, as well as in regions generally associated with the planning and understanding of actions (left superior temporal gyrus, left and right supramarginal gyri). Also, we found stronger activations for action sentences than for visual sentences in the extrastriate body area, a region involved in the visual processing of human body movements. These action-related effects occurred not only in factuals but also in negations and counterfactuals, suggesting that brain regions involved in action understanding and planning are activated by default even when the actions are described as hypothetical or as not happening. Moreover, some of these regions overlapped with those activated during the observation of action videos, indicating that the act of understanding action language and that of observing real actions share neural networks. These results support the claim that embodied representations of linguistic meaning are important even in abstract linguistic contexts.

scholarly journals Origins of Dissociations in the English Past Tense: A Synthetic Brain Imaging Model

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gert Westermann ◽  
Samuel Jones
Keyword(s):  
Brain Imaging ◽  
Processing System ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Imaging Studies ◽  
Activation Patterns ◽  
Imaging Model ◽  
Irregular Verbs ◽  
Phonological Complexity ◽  
Coherent Picture

Brain imaging studies of English past tense inflection have found dissociations between regular and irregular verbs, but no coherent picture has emerged to explain how these dissociations arise. Here we use synthetic brain imaging on a neural network model to provide a mechanistic account of the origins of such dissociations. The model suggests that dissociations between regional activation patterns in verb inflection emerge in an adult processing system that has been shaped through experience-dependent structural brain development. Although these dissociations appear to be between regular and irregular verbs, they arise in the model from a combination of statistical properties including frequency, relationships to other verbs, and phonological complexity, without a causal role for regularity or semantics. These results are consistent with the notion that all inflections are produced in a single associative mechanism. The model generates predictions about the patterning of active brain regions for different verbs that can be tested in future imaging studies.

An Event-Related fMRI Study of Visual and Auditory Oddball Tasks

2001 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 221-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kent A. Kiehl ◽  
Kristin R. Laurens ◽  
Timothy L. Duty ◽  
Bruce B. Forster ◽  
Peter F. Liddle
Keyword(s):  
Superior Temporal Gyrus ◽  
Hemodynamic Response ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Visual Modality ◽  
Auditory Modality ◽  
Neural Activation ◽  
Temporal Lobes ◽  
Auditory Oddball ◽  
Fmri Study ◽  
Occipital Lobes

Abstract Whole brain event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques were employed to elucidate the cerebral sites involved in processing rare target and novel visual stimuli during an oddball discrimination task. The analyses of the hemodynamic response to the visual target stimuli revealed a distributed network of neural sources in anterior and posterior cingulate, inferior and middle frontal gyrus, bilateral parietal lobules, anterior superior temporal gyrus, amygdala, and thalamus. The analyses of the hemodynamic response for the visual novel stimuli revealed an extensive network of neural activations in occipital lobes and posterior temporal lobes, bilateral parietal lobules, and lateral frontal cortex. The hemodynamic response associated with processing target and novel stimuli in the visual modality were also compared with data from an analogous study in the auditory modality ( Kiehl et al., 2001 ). Similar patterns of activation were observed for target and novel stimuli in both modalities, but there were some significant differences. The results support the hypothesis that target detection and novelty processing are associated with neural activation in widespread neural areas, suggesting that the brain seems to adopt a strategy of activating many potentially useful brain regions despite the low probability that these brain regions are necessary for task performance.

Effects of Alphabet-Supplemented Speech on Brain Activity of Listeners: An fMRI Study

2015 ◽  
Vol 58 (5) ◽  
pp. 1452-1463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelene Fercho ◽  
Lee A. Baugh ◽  
Elizabeth K. Hanson
Keyword(s):  
Speech Processing ◽  
Speech Intelligibility ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Superior Temporal Gyrus ◽  
Superior Temporal Sulcus ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Audiovisual Integration ◽  
Degraded Speech ◽  
Fmri Study ◽  
Integration Sites

Purpose The purpose of this article was to examine the neural mechanisms associated with increases in speech intelligibility brought about through alphabet supplementation. Method Neurotypical participants listened to dysarthric speech while watching an accompanying video of a hand pointing to the 1st letter spoken of each word on an alphabet display (treatment condition) or a scrambled display (control condition). Their hemodynamic response was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging, using a sparse sampling event-related paradigm. Speech intelligibility was assessed via a forced-choice auditory identification task throughout the scanning session. Results Alphabet supplementation was associated with significant increases in speech intelligibility. Further, alphabet supplementation increased activation in brain regions known to be involved in both auditory speech and visual letter perception above that seen with the scrambled display. Significant increases in functional activity were observed within the posterior to mid superior temporal sulcus/superior temporal gyrus during alphabet supplementation, regions known to be involved in speech processing and audiovisual integration. Conclusion Alphabet supplementation is an effective tool for increasing the intelligibility of degraded speech and is associated with changes in activity within audiovisual integration sites. Changes in activity within the superior temporal sulcus/superior temporal gyrus may be related to the behavioral increases in intelligibility brought about by this augmented communication method.

Conceptual disorganization and redistribution of resting state cortical hubs in untreated first episode psychosis: A 7T MRI study

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avyarthana Dey ◽  
Kara Dempster ◽  
Michael Mackinley ◽  
Peter Jeon ◽  
Tushar Das ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Negative Symptoms ◽  
Superior Temporal Gyrus ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
First Episode Psychosis ◽  
Cortical Reorganization ◽  
First Episode ◽  
Formal Thought Disorder ◽  
Whole Brain ◽  
Episode Psychosis ◽  
Positive And Negative Symptoms

Background:Network level dysconnectivity has been studied in positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia. Conceptual disorganization (CD) is a symptom subtype which predicts impaired real-world functioning in psychosis. Systematic reviews have reported aberrant connectivity in formal thought disorder, a construct related to CD. However, no studies have investigated whole-brain functional correlates of CD in psychosis. We sought to investigate brain regions explaining the severity of CD in patients with first-episode psychosis (FEPs) compared with healthy controls (HCs).Methods:We computed whole-brain binarized degree centrality maps of 31 FEPs, 25 HCs and characterized the patterns of network connectivity in the two groups. In FEPs, we related these findings to the severity of CD. We also studied the effect of positive and negative symptoms on altered network connectivity.Results:Compared to HCs, reduced hubness of a right superior temporal gyrus (rSTG) cluster was observed in the FEPs. In patients exhibiting high CD, increased hubness of a medial superior parietal (mSPL) cluster was observed, compared to patients exhibiting low CD. These two regions were strongly correlated with CD scores but not with other symptom scores.Discussion:Our observations are congruent with previous findings of reduced but not increased hubness. We observed increased hubness of mSPL suggesting that cortical reorganization occurs to provide alternate routes for information transfer.Conclusion:These findings provide insight into the underlying neural processes mediating the presentation of symptoms in untreated FEP. A longitudinal tracking of the symptom course will be useful to assess the mechanisms underlying these compensatory changes.

Assessment of the neuronal underpinnings of cognitive impairment in bipolar disorder with a picture encoding paradigm and methodological lessons learnt

2021 ◽  
pp. 026988112110085
Author(s):  
JZ Petersen ◽  
J Macoveanu ◽  
HL Kjærstad ◽  
GM Knudsen ◽  
LV Kessing ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Bipolar Disorder ◽  
Cognitive Impairment ◽  
Neuronal Activity ◽  
Cognitive Impairments ◽  
Hierarchical Cluster ◽  
Small Region ◽  
Middle Temporal Gyrus ◽  
Recall Accuracy ◽  
Fmri Study

Background: Mood disorders are often associated with persistent cognitive impairments. However, pro-cognitive treatments are essentially lacking. This is partially because of poor insight into the neurocircuitry abnormalities underlying these deficits and their change with illness progression. Aims: This functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study investigates the neuronal underpinnings of cognitive impairments and neuronal change after mood episodes in remitted patients with bipolar disorder (BD) using a hippocampus-based picture encoding paradigm. Methods: Remitted patients with BD ( n=153) and healthy controls ( n=52) were assessed with neuropsychological tests and underwent fMRI while performing a strategic picture encoding task. A subgroup of patients ( n=43) were rescanned after 16 months. We conducted data-driven hierarchical cluster analysis of patients’ neuropsychological data and compared encoding-related neuronal activity between the resulting neurocognitive subgroups. For patients with follow-up data, effects of mood episodes were assessed by comparing encoding-related neuronal activity change in BD patients with and without episode(s). Results: Two neurocognitive subgroups were revealed: 91 patients displayed cognitive impairments while 62 patients were cognitively normal. No neuronal activity differences were observed between neurocognitive subgroups within the dorsal cognitive control network or hippocampus. However, exploratory whole-brain analysis revealed lower activity within a small region of middle temporal gyrus in impaired patients, which significantly correlated with poorer neuropsychological performance. No changes were observed in encoding-related neuronal activity or picture recall accuracy with the occurrence of mood episode(s) during the follow-up period. Conclusion: Memory encoding fMRI paradigms may not capture the neuronal underpinnings of cognitive impairment or effects of mood episodes.

scholarly journals Dissociable Mechanisms of Verbal Working Memory Revealed through Multivariate Lesion Mapping

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 2542-2554 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maryam Ghaleh ◽  
Elizabeth H Lacey ◽  
Mackenzie E Fama ◽  
Zainab Anbari ◽  
Andrew T DeMarco ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Spatial Working Memory ◽  
Superior Temporal Gyrus ◽  
Verbal Working Memory ◽  
Brain Structures ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Task Demands ◽  
Auditory Information ◽  
Verbal Information ◽  
Task Conditions

Abstract Two maintenance mechanisms with separate neural systems have been suggested for verbal working memory: articulatory-rehearsal and non-articulatory maintenance. Although lesion data would be key to understanding the essential neural substrates of these systems, there is little evidence from lesion studies that the two proposed mechanisms crucially rely on different neuroanatomical substrates. We examined 39 healthy adults and 71 individuals with chronic left-hemisphere stroke to determine if verbal working memory tasks with varying demands would rely on dissociable brain structures. Multivariate lesion–symptom mapping was used to identify the brain regions involved in each task, controlling for spatial working memory scores. Maintenance of verbal information relied on distinct brain regions depending on task demands: sensorimotor cortex under higher demands and superior temporal gyrus (STG) under lower demands. Inferior parietal cortex and posterior STG were involved under both low and high demands. These results suggest that maintenance of auditory information preferentially relies on auditory-phonological storage in the STG via a nonarticulatory maintenance when demands are low. Under higher demands, sensorimotor regions are crucial for the articulatory rehearsal process, which reduces the reliance on STG for maintenance. Lesions to either of these regions impair maintenance of verbal information preferentially under the appropriate task conditions.

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