Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-14T21:26:38.503Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Role of frontal versus temporal cortex in verbal fluency as revealed by voxel-based lesion symptom mapping

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2006

JULIANA V. BALDO
Affiliation:
Center for Aphasia and Related Disorders, VA Northern California Health Care System, Martinez, California
SOPHIE SCHWARTZ
Affiliation:
Departments of Neuroscience and Clinical Neurology, University of Geneva, Switzerland, Geneva, Switzerland
DAVID WILKINS
Affiliation:
Center for Aphasia and Related Disorders, VA Northern California Health Care System, Martinez, California
NINA F. DRONKERS
Affiliation:
Center for Aphasia and Related Disorders, VA Northern California Health Care System, Martinez, California Department of Neurology, University of California, Davis, Davis, California Center for Research in Language, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, California

Abstract

Category and letter fluency tasks have been used to demonstrate psychological and neurological dissociations between semantic and phonological aspects of word retrieval. Some previous neuroimaging and lesion studies have suggested that category fluency (semantic-based word retrieval) is mediated primarily by temporal cortex, while letter fluency (letter-based word retrieval) is mediated primarily by frontal cortex. Other studies have suggested that both letter and category fluency are mediated by frontal cortex. We tested these hypotheses using voxel-based lesion symptom mapping (VLSM) in a group of 48 left-hemisphere stroke patients. VLSM maps revealed that category and letter fluency deficits correlate with lesions in temporal and frontal cortices, respectively. Other regions, including parietal cortex, were significantly implicated in both tasks. Our findings are therefore consistent with the hypothesis that temporal cortex subserves word retrieval constrained by semantics, whereas frontal regions are more critical for strategic word retrieval constrained by phonology. (JINS, 2006, 12, 896–900.)

Type
BRIEF COMMUNICATIONS
Copyright
© 2006 The International Neuropsychological Society

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Baldo, J.V. & Shimamura, A. (1998). Letter and category fluency in patients with frontal lobe lesions. Neuropsychology, 12, 259267.Google Scholar
Bates, E., Wilson, S., Saygin, A.P., Dick, F., Sereno, M., Knight, R.T., & Dronkers, N. (2003). Voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping. Nature Neuroscience, 6, 448450.Google Scholar
DeArmond, S.J., Fusco, M., & Dewey, M. (1976). Structure of the human brain (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.
Dronkers, N.F. (1996). A new brain region for speech: The insula and articulatory planning. Nature, 384, 159161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fu, C.H., Morgan, K., Suckling, J., Williams, S.C., Andrew, C., Vythelingum, G.N., & McGuire, P.K. (2002). A functional magnetic resonance imaging study of overt letter verbal fluency using a clustered acquisition sequence: Greater anterior cingulate activation with increased task demand. Neuroimage, 17, 871879.Google Scholar
Gourovitch, M., Kirkby, B., Goldberg, T.E., Weinberger, D.R., Gold, J.M., Esposito, G., Van Horn, J.D., & Berman, K.F. (2000). A comparison of rCBF patterns during letter and semantic fluency. Neuropsychology, 14, 353360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henry, J.D. & Crawford, J.R. (2004). A meta-analytic review of verbal fluency performance following focal cortical lesions. Neuropsychology, 18, 284295.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Janowsky, J.S., Shimamura, A.P., Kritchevsky, M., & Squire, L.R. (1989). Cognitive impairment following frontal lobe damage and its relevance to human amnesia. Behavioral Neuroscience, 103, 548560.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones-Gotman, M. & Milner, B. (1977). Design fluency: The invention of nonsense drawings after focal cortical lesions. Neuropsychologia, 15, 653674.Google Scholar
Jonides, J., Schumacher, E.H., Smith, E.E., Koeppe, R.A., Awh, E., Reuter-Lorenz, P.A., Marshuetz, C., & Willis, C.R. (1998). The role of parietal cortex in verbal working memory. Journal of Neuroscience, 18, 50265034.Google Scholar
Kertesz, A. (1982). Western Aphasia Battery. New York: Grune & Stratton.
Martin, A., Wiggs, C.L., Lalonde, F., & Mack, C. (1994). Word retrieval to letter and semantic cues: A double dissociation in normal subjects using interference tasks. Neuropsychologia, 32, 14871494.Google Scholar
Milner, B. (1964). Some effects of frontal lobectomy in man. In J. Warren & K. Akert (Eds.), The Frontal Granular Cortex and Behavior (pp. 313331). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Monsch, A., Bondi, M., Butters, N., Paulsen, J., Salmon, D., Bruyer, D., & Swenson, M. (1994). A comparison of category and letter fluency in Alzheimer's and Huntington's disease. Neuropsychology, 8, 2530.Google Scholar
Mummery, C.J., Patterson, K., Hodges, J.R., & Wise, R.J. (1996). Generating ‘tiger’ as an animal name or a word beginning with T: Differences in brain activation. Proceedings. Biological Sciences/The Royal Society, 263, 989995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oldfield, R. (1971). The assessment and analysis of handedness: The Edinburgh Inventory. Neuropsychologia, 9, 97113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosen, V.M. & Engle, R.W. (1997). The role of working memory capacity in retrieval. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 126, 211227.Google Scholar
Schwartz, S. & Baldo, J. (2001). Distinct patterns of word retrieval in right and left frontal lobe patients: A multidimensional perspective. Neuropsychologia, 39, 12091217.Google Scholar
Schwartz, S., Baldo, J., Graves, R.E., & Brugger, P. (2003). Pervasive influence of semantics in letter and category fluency: A multidimensional approach. Brain and Language, 87, 400411.Google Scholar
Troyer, A., Moscovitch, M., Winocur, G., Alexander, M., & Stuss, D. (1998). Clustering and switching on verbal fluency: The effects of focal frontal- and temporal-lobe lesions. Neuropsychologia, 36, 499504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar