Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-9-2021
Abstract
Theories of language organization in the brain commonly posit that different regions underlie distinct linguistic mechanisms. However, such theories have been criticized on the grounds that many neuroimaging studies of language processing find similar effects across regions. Moreover, condition by region interaction effects, which provide the strongest evidence of functional differentiation between regions, have rarely been offered in support of these theories. Here we address this by using lesion-symptom mapping in three large, partially-overlapping groups of aphasia patients with left hemisphere brain damage due to stroke (N = 121, N = 92, N = 218). We identified multiple measure by region interaction effects, associating damage to the posterior middle temporal gyrus with syntactic comprehension deficits, damage to posterior inferior frontal gyrus with expressive agrammatism, and damage to inferior angular gyrus with semantic category word fluency deficits. Our results are inconsistent with recent hypotheses that regions of the language network are undifferentiated with respect to high-level linguistic processing.
Recommended Citation
Matchin, W., Basilakos, A., Den Ouden, D.B., Stark, B.C., Hickok, G., and Fridriksson, J. (2022) Functional differentiation in the language network revealed by lesion-symptom mapping. NeuroImage, 247, 118778. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118778
Peer Reviewed
1
Copyright
The authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
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Nervous System Commons, Neurosciences Commons, Other Linguistics Commons, Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics Commons
Comments
This article was originally published in NeuroImage, volume 247, in 2022. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118778