Neuronal Circuits Supporting Development of Visual Naming Revealed by Intracranial Coherence Modulations

Abstract

BackgroundImprovement in visual naming abilities throughout the childhood and adolescence supports development of higher-order linguistic skills. We investigated neuronal circuits underlying improvement in the speed of visual naming with age, and age-related dynamics of these circuits.MethodsResponse times were electronically measured during an overt visual naming task in epilepsy patients undergoing stereo-EEG monitoring. Coherence modulations among pairs of neuroanatomic parcels were computed and analyzed for relationship with response time and age.ResultsDuring the overt visual naming task, mean response time (latency) significantly decreased from 4 to 23 years of age. Coherence modulations during visual naming showed that increased connectivity between certain brain regions, particularly that between left fusiform gyrus/left parahippocampal gyrus and left frontal operculum, is associated with improvement in naming speed. Also, decreased connectivity in other brain regions, particularly between left angular and supramarginal gyri, is associated with decreased mean response time. Further, coherence modulations between left frontal operculum and both left fusiform and left posterior cingulate gyri significantly increase, while that between left angular and supramarginal gyri significantly decrease, with age.ConclusionNaming speed continues to improve from pre-school years into young adulthood. This age-related improvement in efficiency of naming environmental objects occurs likely because of strengthened direct connectivity between semantic and phonological nodes, and elimination of intermediate higher-order cognitive steps.

The changing landscape of electrical stimulation language mapping with subdural electrodes and stereoelectroencephalography for pediatric epilepsy: A literature review and commentary

“…39 Speech arrest was observed when stimulating bilateral inferior precentral gyri and left posterior SFG. 31 Sonoda's earlier study identified auditory sentence-listening sites distributed throughout more posterior STG and MTG, whereas HGM for sentence stimulus offsets and responses were found in posterior temporal and frontal regions. 40 This study also found HGM patterns for speech production when stimulating the Rolandic gyrus of either hemisphere.…”

“…A total of 353 children and young adults were evaluated, with possible patient overlap between the eight Cincinnati Children's cohort studies. [25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32] Location details, when available, are provided in as much detail as possible, and range in specificity from lobes to Brodmann areas based on reported information. Nearly all studies mapped frontal and temporal regions.…”

“…The four earlier studies used SDEs, 25,26,29,32 whereas later studies used sEEG. 27,28,30,31 The median patient age across all eight studies was 12.8 years. Patients in the sEEG studies were older (median = 13.37 years) than the SDE cohort (median = 10.76 years).…”

“…23,24 The youngest patient with attempted language mapping in all studies was 11 months of age, 25 followed by a 2-year-old patient, 22 and then multiple patients ~3 years of age. 29 Seven studies reported their youngest patient being 4 years of age, 23,26,[30][31][32]39,41 and five 9,24,27,28,40 patient is possible. Many studies failed to report the success rates of accurate localization of languageprocessing areas.…”

“…Visual naming, also known as “picture naming” or “confrontation naming,” involves showing the patient a picture or object and asking them to verbalize its correct name. We identified 12 studies 9,22–32 that employed a visual naming task, 5 of which used passive HGM recordings (Table 1). Eight studies utilized SDE, whereas four recent studies utilized sEEG.…”