55
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: not found

      New Method for fMRI Investigations of Language: Defining ROIs Functionally in Individual Subjects

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisherPMC
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Previous neuroimaging research has identified a number of brain regions sensitive to different aspects of linguistic processing, but precise functional characterization of these regions has proven challenging. We hypothesize that clearer functional specificity may emerge if candidate language-sensitive regions are identified functionally within each subject individually, a method that has revealed striking functional specificity in visual cortex but that has rarely been applied to neuroimaging studies of language. This method enables pooling of data from corresponding functional regions across subjects rather than from corresponding locations in stereotaxic space (which may differ functionally because of the anatomical variability across subjects). However, it is far from obvious a priori that this method will work as it requires that multiple stringent conditions be met. Specifically, candidate language-sensitive brain regions must be identifiable functionally within individual subjects in a short scan, must be replicable within subjects and have clear correspondence across subjects, and must manifest key signatures of language processing (e.g., a higher response to sentences than nonword strings, whether visual or auditory). We show here that this method does indeed work: we identify 13 candidate language-sensitive regions that meet these criteria, each present in ≥80% of subjects individually. The selectivity of these regions is stronger using our method than when standard group analyses are conducted on the same data, suggesting that the future application of this method may reveal clearer functional specificity than has been evident in prior neuroimaging research on language.

          Related collections

          Most cited references5

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: not found
          • Book: not found

          Vergleichende Lokalisationslehre der Großhirnrinde

            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: not found
            • Book: not found

            The New Cognitive Neurosciences

            Hagoort P. (2009)
              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: not found
              • Book: not found

              New Methods in Reading Comprehension Research

              Potter MC (1984)
                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Journal
                Journal of Neurophysiology
                Journal of Neurophysiology
                American Physiological Society
                0022-3077
                1522-1598
                August 2010
                August 2010
                : 104
                : 2
                : 1177-1194
                Affiliations
                [1 ]McGovern Institute for Brain Research, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts
                Article
                10.1152/jn.00032.2010
                2934923
                20410363
                c6348cf5-b007-4787-87f7-3fbc61979cf1
                © 2010
                History

                Comments

                Comment on this article