Brain regions essential for word comprehension: Drawing inferences from patients

Hillis, MA Argye E.; Rorden, Christopher; Fridriksson, Julius

doi:10.1002/ana.24941

Cited by 39 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…The main differences were that functional results included the left lateral/medial middle and inferior temporal gyri and left anterior fusiform gyrus, while anatomical results were largely restricted to the superior temporal gyrus, but extended into the posterior superior temporal gyrus. These findings are consistent with the classic localization of auditory comprehension to the temporal lobe, as shown by prior stroke lesion studies Hillis et al, 2017) and fMRI studies of healthy controls (Price, 2012). The fact that the functional results extend more ventrally into the temporal lobe likely relates to poor anatomical lesion coverage in that region.…”

Section: Functional Anomaly Map Signal Relates To Behavior In Both Lesupporting

confidence: 90%

Functional anomaly mapping reveals local and distant dysfunction caused by brain lesions

DeMarco

Turkeltaub

2018

Preprint

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SummaryThe lesion method has been a cornerstone in the endeavor to understand brain-behavior relationships in humans, but has relied on the flawed assumption that anatomically abnormal tissue functions abnormally and anatomically normal tissue functions normally. To address this longstanding problem, we introduce an approach to directly map the degree of functional anomaly throughout the brain in individual patients. These functional anomaly maps identify anatomical lesions and are stable across measurements. Moreover, the maps identify functionally anomalous regions in anatomically normal tissue, providing a direct measure of remote effects of lesions such as diaschisis. Lesion-behavior mapping using these maps replicates classic behavioral localization and identifies relationships between tissue function and behavior distant from the anatomical lesions. This method provides brain-wide maps of the functional effects of focal lesions, which could have wide implications for one of the most important methods in neuroscience.

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Section: Functional Anomaly Map Signal Relates To Behavior In Both Lesupporting

confidence: 90%

Functional anomaly mapping reveals local and distant dysfunction caused by brain lesions

DeMarco

Turkeltaub

2018

Preprint

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“…Thus in the current paradigm, we expected facilitation to manifest as lower amplitudes for the semantically related condition than the unrelated condition and even lower ones for the identity condition, which involves repetition of the same word. Exactly this pattern was observed in left superior temporal cortex at 180-335 ms, which conforms with the localization of lexical access both in space (Hickok & Poeppel, 2007;Hillis, Rorden, & Fridriksson, 2017;Lau, Phillips, & Poeppel, 2008) and time ("lemma selection" in Indefrey, 2011;Indefrey & Levelt, 2004). Thus, this effect has a straightforward interpretation in terms of spreading activation between semantically related lexical representations.…”

Section: Facilitation In Word Reading At 180-335ms Centered In Left Ssupporting

confidence: 81%

Lexical Access in Comprehension vs. Production: Spatiotemporal Localization of Semantic Facilitation and Interference

Dirani

Pylkkänen

2018

Preprint

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Humans understand words faster when they are preceded by semantically related words. This facilitation is thought to result from spreading activation between words with similar meanings. Interestingly, in language production, semantic relatedness often has the opposite effect: in object naming for example, a related prior word delays the naming time of the current object. This could be due to competition during conceptual search or later interference at the motor preparation stage. However, no study has systematically compared the facilitory and inhibitory effects and thus their neurobiological relationship is unknown. We contrasted maximally parallel production and comprehension tasks during magnetoencephalography and found that in comprehension (specifically word reading), semantic relatedness modulated activity in the left middle STG at 180-335ms, consistent with prior findings on the spatiotemporal localization of lexical access. In contrast, a semantic interference pattern for the production task (object naming) occurred in a postlexical time-window at 395-485ms in left posterior insular cortex, consistent with postlexical motor preparation. Thus, our data show that semantic priming during comprehension and interference during production are not two sides of the same coin but rather they clearly dissociate in space and time, consistent with a lexical account for comprehension and a post-lexical one for production. Significance statementThe processing of semantically related words has been a central tool for understanding the organization of the mental lexicon. One striking observation is that semantic relatedness tends to be facilitory in comprehension but inhibitory in language production, perhaps because only production involves a conceptual search through semantically related candidates. The neurobiology of this contrast is not understood. Our magnetoencephalography results demonstrate that the facilitory pattern is first observed in classic left temporal lexical access regions at ~200ms, whereas the inhibitory pattern occurs later and in the insular cortex. These findings show that the two effects do not co-localize in space or time and suggest that the inhibitory effects in production stem from a late motor preparation stage.

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“…There is evidence from both lesion studies and functional imaging studies that there is a circuit of gray matter regions and white matter tracts that supports word comprehension, 36 which includes left pSTG as well as middle and inferior temporal gyri, temporal pole, and tracts that connect them. 19,[22][23][24][25][26][27] However, our results do indicate that left pSTG and retrolenticular white matter are critical for linking the spoken word to one of a set of semantically related meanings.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 67%

“…However, previous studies that have separately evaluated areas critical for nonverbal semantics (e.g., with picture-picture association) have found that the anterior temporal lobe is associated with nonverbal semantics, whereas pSTG remain associated with word comprehension after controlling for performance on picture-picture association. 27,36 FUTURE DIRECTIONS Additional investigations are planned to identify areas of acute tissue dysfunction (infarct and/or hypoperfusion) that are associated with phonological errors in naming. It is possible that we did not have adequate power to identify these areas, after correcting for lesion volume.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Quite a few studies of chronic poststroke aphasia have identified an association between impaired auditory word comprehension and lesions in left pSTG. 19,[22][23][24][25][26][27] Given this evidence, this area could be one where damage prevents recovery of word comprehension, or it could be a primary area supporting word comprehension in the intact brain. By studying participants acutely after stroke, we can identify areas of dysfunctional brain tissue associated with deficits before recovery or the opportunity for substantial structure-function reorganization.…”

Section: Abstract: Aphasia Stroke Comprehension Semantics Brain Mmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Regional Brain Dysfunction Associated with Semantic Errors in Comprehension

et al. 2018

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Here we illustrate how investigation of individuals acutely after stroke, before structure/function reorganization through recovery or rehabilitation, can be helpful in answering questions about the role of specific brain regions in language functions. Although there is converging evidence from a variety of sources that the left posterior-superior temporal gyrus plays some role in spoken word comprehension, its precise role in this function has not been established. We hypothesized that this region is essential for distinguishing between semantically related words, because it is critical for linking the spoken word to the complete semantic representation. We tested this hypothesis in 127 individuals with 48 hours of acute ischemic stroke, before the opportunity for reorganization or recovery. We identified tissue dysfunction (acute infarct and/or hypoperfusion) in gray and white matter parcels of the left hemisphere, and we evaluated the association between rate of semantic errors in a word-picture verification tasks and extent of tissue dysfunction in each region. We found that after correcting for lesion volume and multiple comparisons, the rate of semantic errors correlated with the extent of tissue dysfunction in left posterior-superior temporal gyrus and retrolenticular white matter.

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Brain regions essential for word comprehension: Drawing inferences from patients

Cited by 39 publications

References 45 publications

Functional anomaly mapping reveals local and distant dysfunction caused by brain lesions

Functional anomaly mapping reveals local and distant dysfunction caused by brain lesions

Lexical Access in Comprehension vs. Production: Spatiotemporal Localization of Semantic Facilitation and Interference

Regional Brain Dysfunction Associated with Semantic Errors in Comprehension

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