Task difficulty modulates brain-behavior correlations in language production and cognitive control: Behavioral and fMRI evidence from a phonological go/no-go picture-naming paradigm

Abstract

Language production and cognitive control are complex processes that involve distinct yet interacting brain networks. However, the extent to which these processes interact and their neural bases have not been thoroughly examined. Here, we investigated the neural and behavioral bases of language production and cognitive control via a phonological go/no-go picture-naming task. Naming difficulty and cognitive control demands (i.e., conflict monitoring and response inhibition) were manipulated by varying the proportion of naming trials (go trials) and inhibition trials (no-go trials) across task runs. The results demonstrated that as task demands increased, participants' behavioral performance declined (i.e., longer reaction times on naming trials, more commission errors on inhibition trials) whereas brain activation generally increased. Increased activation was found not only within the language network but also in domain-general control regions. Additionally, right superior and inferior frontal and left supramarginal gyri were sensitive to increased task difficulty during both language production and response inhibition. We also found both positive and negative brain-behavior correlations. Most notably, increased activation in sensorimotor regions, such as precentral and postcentral gyri, was associated with better behavioral performance, in both successful picture naming and successful inhibition. Moreover, comparing the strength of correlations across conditions indicated that the brain-behavior correlations in sensorimotor regions that were associated with improved performance became stronger as task demands increased. Overall, our results suggest that cognitive control demands affect language production, and that successfully coping with increases in task difficulty relies on both language-specific and domain-general cognitive control regions.

Neural signatures of inhibitory control in bilingual spoken production

“…This result is important because it converges with evidence showing that bilinguals’ both languages are constantly coactivated, even when intending to speak one language alone, and need to be regulated even when speaking in the L1 (Costa, 2005; Kroll et al, 2006, Román et al, 2015). Importantly, recent data has reported the activation of similar domain general regions during response inhibition in a go-no-go naming task in monolinguals (Zhang et al, 2018), suggesting an active role of these areas for language control. The present results highlight the way that bilingualism may change the underlying functional network that is recruited during native language processing.…”

Kinesthetic motor-imagery training improves performance on lexical-semantic access

“…Furthermore, as observed in previous studies [19,70], it seems that abstract items might be harder to process, potentially due to the high-imageability of concrete items as compared to low-imageable abstract items. It is interesting to note that some experiments show that the motor system is more involved in language processing when the processing is considered difficult [79][80][81]. Thus, the interaction that we observed may be explained by greater involvement of the motor system in the processing of abstract verbs.…”

Regional Alteration within the Cerebellum and the Reorganization of the Cerebrocerebellar System following Poststroke Aphasia

“…Studies based on lesion-symptom mapping (LSM) revealed that damage to the supramarginal gyrus and the postcentral gyrus among poststroke individuals is related to phonological deficits in single-word production [ 37 – 39 ]. A task-based fMRI study revealed that both regions participate in picture naming tasks among healthy individuals [ 40 ]. In general, these two areas together are thought to contribute to fluent speech production by phonetic-articulatory planning [ 41 ].…”