Mapping How Words Leap From the Brain to the Tongue

Summary: A new study reports on the complex brain connections employed during word retrieval.

Source: San Diego State University.

SDSU neuroscientist Stephanie Ries explores the complex brain connections employed during word retrieval.

When you look at a picture of a mug, the neurons that store your memory of what a mug is begin firing. But it’s not a pinpoint process; a host of neurons that code for related ideas and items–bowl, coffee, spoon, plate, breakfast–are activated as well. How your brain narrows down this smorgasbord of related concepts to the one word you’re truly seeking is a complicated and poorly understood cognitive task. A new study led by San Diego State University neuroscientist Stephanie Ries, of the School of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, delved into this question by measuring the brain’s cortical activity and found that wide, overlapping swaths of the brain work in parallel to retrieve the correct word from memory.

Most adults can quickly and effortlessly recall as many as 100,000 regularly used words when prompted, but how the brain accomplishes this has long boggled scientists. How does the brain nearly always find the needle in the haystack? Previous work has revealed that the brain organizes ideas and words into semantically related clusters. When trying to recall a specific word, the brain activates its cluster, significantly reducing the size of the haystack.

To figure out what happens next in that process, Ries and colleagues asked for help from a population of people in a unique position to lend their brainpower to the problem: patients undergoing brain surgery to reduce their epileptic seizures. Before surgery, neurosurgeons monitor their brain activity to figure out which region of the brain is triggering the patients’ seizures, which requires the patients to wear a grid of dozens of electrodes placed directly on top of the cortex, the outermost folded layers of the brain.

While the patients were hooked up to this grid in a hospital and waiting for a seizure to occur, Ries asked if they’d be willing to participate in her research. Recording brain signals directly from the cortical surface affords neuroscientists like Ries an unparalleled look at exactly when and where neurons are communicating with one another during tasks.

“During that period, you have time to do cognitive research that’s impossible to do otherwise,” she said. “It’s an extraordinary window of opportunity.”

For the recent study, nine patients agreed to participate. In 15 minute-sessions, she and her team would show the patients an item on a computer screen–musical instruments, vehicles, houses–then ask them to name it as quickly as possible, all while tracking their brain activity.

They measured the separate neuronal processes involved with first activating the item’s conceptual cluster, then selecting the proper word. Surprisingly, they discovered the two processes actually happen at the same time and activate a much wider network of brain regions than previously suspected. As expected, two regions known to be involved in language processing lit up, the left inferior frontal gyrus and the posterior temporal cortex. But so did several other regions not traditionally linked to language, including the medial and middle frontal gyri, the researchers reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“This work shows the word retrieval process in the brain is not at all as localized as we previously thought,” Ries said. “It’s not a clear division of labor between brain regions. It’s a much more complex process.”

a brain
Learning exactly how the brain accomplishes these tasks could one day help speech-language pathologists devise strategies for treating disorders that prevent people from readily accessing their vocabulary. NeuroscienceNews.com image is in the public domain.

Learning exactly how the brain accomplishes these tasks could one day help speech-language pathologists devise strategies for treating disorders that prevent people from readily accessing their vocabulary.

“Word retrieval is usually effortless in most people, but it is routinely compromised in patients who suffer from anomia, or word retrieval difficulty,” Ries said. “Anomia is the most common complaint in patients with stroke-induced aphasia, but is also common in neurodegenerative diseases and normal aging. So it is critical to understand how this process works to understand how to help make it better.”

About this neuroscience research article

Source: Michael Price – San Diego State University
Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com image is in the public domain.
Original Research: Abstract for “Spatiotemporal dynamics of word retrieval in speech production revealed by cortical high-frequency band activity” by Stephanie K. Riès, Rummit K. Dhillon, Alex Clarke, David King-Stephens, Kenneth D. Laxer, Peter B. Weber, Rachel A. Kuperman, Kurtis I. Auguste, Peter Brunner, Gerwin Schalk, Jack J. Lin, Josef Parvizi, Nathan E. Crone, Nina F. Dronkers, and Robert T. Knight in PNAS. Published online May 22 2017 doi:10.1073/pnas.1620669114

Cite This NeuroscienceNews.com Article

[cbtabs][cbtab title=”MLA”]San Diego State University “Mapping How Words Leap From the Brain to the Tongue.” NeuroscienceNews. NeuroscienceNews, 19 June 2017.
<https://neurosciencenews.com/word-retrieval-neuroscience-6932/>.[/cbtab][cbtab title=”APA”]San Diego State University (2017, June 19). Mapping How Words Leap From the Brain to the Tongue. NeuroscienceNew. Retrieved June 19, 2017 from https://neurosciencenews.com/word-retrieval-neuroscience-6932/[/cbtab][cbtab title=”Chicago”]San Diego State University “Mapping How Words Leap From the Brain to the Tongue.” https://neurosciencenews.com/word-retrieval-neuroscience-6932/ (accessed June 19, 2017).[/cbtab][/cbtabs]


Abstract

Spatiotemporal dynamics of word retrieval in speech production revealed by cortical high-frequency band activity

Word retrieval is core to language production and relies on complementary processes: the rapid activation of lexical and conceptual representations and word selection, which chooses the correct word among semantically related competitors. Lexical and conceptual activation is measured by semantic priming. In contrast, word selection is indexed by semantic interference and is hampered in semantically homogeneous (HOM) contexts. We examined the spatiotemporal dynamics of these complementary processes in a picture naming task with blocks of semantically heterogeneous (HET) or HOM stimuli. We used electrocorticography data obtained from frontal and temporal cortices, permitting detailed spatiotemporal analysis of word retrieval processes. A semantic interference effect was observed with naming latencies longer in HOM versus HET blocks. Cortical response strength as indexed by high-frequency band (HFB) activity (70–150 Hz) amplitude revealed effects linked to lexical-semantic activation and word selection observed in widespread regions of the cortical mantle. Depending on the subsecond timing and cortical region, HFB indexed semantic interference (i.e., more activity in HOM than HET blocks) or semantic priming effects (i.e., more activity in HET than HOM blocks). These effects overlapped in time and space in the left posterior inferior temporal gyrus and the left prefrontal cortex. The data do not support a modular view of word retrieval in speech production but rather support substantial overlap of lexical-semantic activation and word selection mechanisms in the brain.

“Spatiotemporal dynamics of word retrieval in speech production revealed by cortical high-frequency band activity” by Stephanie K. Riès, Rummit K. Dhillon, Alex Clarke, David King-Stephens, Kenneth D. Laxer, Peter B. Weber, Rachel A. Kuperman, Kurtis I. Auguste, Peter Brunner, Gerwin Schalk, Jack J. Lin, Josef Parvizi, Nathan E. Crone, Nina F. Dronkers, and Robert T. Knight in PNAS. Published online May 22 2017 doi:10.1073/pnas.1620669114

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