Linguistic theory and neuroimaging evidence: an fMRI study of Broca’s area in lexical semantics

There has been a long debate on the functional characterization of left inferior frontal cortex, including proposals regarding syntactic and lexico-semantic involvement. We studied nine right-handed adults, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during performance on a semantic decision...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Neuropsychologia 2003, Vol.41 (9), p.1199-1207
Main Authors: Müller, Ralph-Axel, Kleinhans, Natalia, Courchesne, Eric
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Anatomical correlates of behavior
Behavioral psychophysiology
Biological and medical sciences
Broca’s area
Female
Frontal Lobe - metabolism
Frontal Lobe - physiology
Functional MRI
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
Inferior frontal lobe
Lexicon
Linguistics
Magnetic Resonance Imaging - statistics & numerical data
Male
Memory - physiology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Semantics
Task Performance and Analysis
Working memory
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Summary:There has been a long debate on the functional characterization of left inferior frontal cortex, including proposals regarding syntactic and lexico-semantic involvement. We studied nine right-handed adults, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during performance on a semantic decision task in which subjects had to determine whether noun–verb pairs were semantically associated. In comparison with a visuoperceptual control task, activation clusters were seen in left inferior frontal and middle temporal regions, as well as the bilateral superior frontal gyrus. In agreement with previous studies, our findings suggest that Broca’s area is involved in semantic processing. Findings of lexico-semantic as well as syntactic processing in the inferior frontal lobe may be accounted for in terms of working memory demands.
ISSN:0028-3932
1873-3514
DOI:10.1016/S0028-3932(03)00045-9