5. Left inferior parietal lobe and auditory cortex jointly contribute to sound knowledge retrieval

COEX 

Conceptual knowledge is central to human cognition. Previous neuroimaging studies suggest that conceptual processing relies on the joint contribution of modality-specific perceptual-motor and multimodal brain regions (Kuhnke et al. 2023). In particular, the multimodal left inferior parietal lobe (IPL) coupled with auditory cortex during sound knowledge retrieval and with somatomotor cortex during action knowledge retrieval (Kuhnke et al. 2021). However, as neuroimaging is correlational, it remains unknown whether the interaction between modality-specific and multimodal cortices is causally relevant for conceptually-guided behavior. To tackle this issue, we applied inhibitory transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over modality-specific cortex (somatomotor, auditory, or sham), before 24 healthy participants received TMS over multimodal cortex (IPL, or sham) during action and sound judgment tasks on written words (Figure 1A).