Neural Mechanisms of Phonological Interference and Facilitation in Spoken Word Production
Poster No:
823
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Lydia Huang1, Katie McMahon2, Greig de Zubicaray1, Angélique Volfart3
Institutions:
1Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, 2Royal Brisbane & Women’s Hospital; Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, 3University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Kirchberg
First Author:
Co-Author(s):
Katie McMahon
Royal Brisbane & Women’s Hospital; Queensland University of Technology
Brisbane, Queensland
Royal Brisbane & Women’s Hospital; Queensland University of Technology
Brisbane, Queensland
Introduction:
Two brain areas – the left posterior superior temporal gyrus (LpSTG) and the left supramarginal gyrus (LSMG) – have been proposed to be associated with phonological processes in word production (Dell et al., 2013; Indefrey, 2011). Interestingly, the proposals were based on different sources of evidence: accurate picture naming in healthy participants for the LpSTG (e.g., de Zubicaray et al., 2002) and non-word speech errors made by lesion patients during picture naming for the LSMG (Dell et al., 2013). This suggests that the two brain areas may reflect engagement at different levels of phonological processing during production: lexical vs. post-lexical (articulatory phonetic).
Here, we aim to distinguish the functional roles of these two brain areas using a word production paradigm that elicits two distinct phonological effects with a phoneme-level manipulation. These two effects are facilitation (faster responses for words that share the first phoneme) and interference (slower responses for words sharing distributed phonemes). We hypothesized that the LpSTG is activated during the facilitation effect reflecting its role in lexical word form processing whereas the LSMG is engaged during the interference effect due to its role in post-lexical/articulatory phonetic processes.
Here, we aim to distinguish the functional roles of these two brain areas using a word production paradigm that elicits two distinct phonological effects with a phoneme-level manipulation. These two effects are facilitation (faster responses for words that share the first phoneme) and interference (slower responses for words sharing distributed phonemes). We hypothesized that the LpSTG is activated during the facilitation effect reflecting its role in lexical word form processing whereas the LSMG is engaged during the interference effect due to its role in post-lexical/articulatory phonetic processes.
Methods:
This multiband 3T fMRI study employed a blocked cyclic naming paradigm to elicit phonological facilitation and interference effects. Seventeen participants attended 2 sessions (3-13 days apart), during which they completed one task eliciting either facilitation or interference effect (task order was counterbalanced across sessions). Participants were presented with blocks of 6 pictures that were randomly presented 6 times (organized as cycles). Blocks were either homogeneous (picture names shared phonological features), or heterogeneous (picture names did not share phonological features). In the facilitation task, homogeneous blocks included picture names sharing the first phoneme. In the interference task, homogeneous blocks contained picture names with phonemic overlap distributed across word positions (Breining et al., 2016). The two tasks contained distinctive sets of pictures and names and were tested behaviourally prior to this fMRI study to ensure they elicited the expected effects (p < .001, η² > .43). In separate participant groups, the first phoneme overlap produced facilitation from the first cycle onward (mean difference = -19.97ms), and distributed phonemic overlap showed interference from the second cycle onwards (mean difference = 22.54ms).
Preprocessing was conducted with SPM12 (https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/software/spm12/) and the CONN toolbox (version 22.a) in MATLAB R2019B for each task, including removing artifacts from muscular movements, respiration, and CSF (Volfart et al., 2024). Task activation maps were then generated and contrasted (homogeneous vs. heterogeneous). All brain results were family-wise error corrected and labeled with Brainnetome (Fan et al., 2016).
Preprocessing was conducted with SPM12 (https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/software/spm12/) and the CONN toolbox (version 22.a) in MATLAB R2019B for each task, including removing artifacts from muscular movements, respiration, and CSF (Volfart et al., 2024). Task activation maps were then generated and contrasted (homogeneous vs. heterogeneous). All brain results were family-wise error corrected and labeled with Brainnetome (Fan et al., 2016).
Results:
Results support our hypothesis regarding the interference effect. Significant signal increases were observed in the left inferior frontal gyrus, the LSMG, the left fusiform gyrus, and the left ventrolateral premotor cortex in the homogeneous relative to the heterogeneous blocks. Significant signal decreases were observed in the right anterior cingulate cortex. As for the facilitation effect, no brain clusters have survived correction.
Conclusions:
Our results suggest that the LSMG processes articulatory phonetic representations for word production, as it is engaged during the interference effect that arises from sequencing articulatory phonetic features in varying word positions. We did not observe significant activation in LpSTG or any other region during the facilitation effect, suggesting that the processes involved may be different and/or are more weakly engaged than those that have been found to activate the LpSTG in previous studies (e.g., de Zubicaray & McMahon, 2009).
Language:
Speech Production 1
Novel Imaging Acquisition Methods:
BOLD fMRI 2
Keywords:
FUNCTIONAL MRI
Language
Other - Phonology, Production, Blocked cyclic naming, Multiband fMRI
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
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2. de Zubicaray, G. I., & McMahon, K. L. (2009). Auditory context effects in picture naming investigated with event-related fMRI. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 9(3), 260–269. https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.9.3.260
3. de Zubicaray, G. I., McMahon, K. L., Eastburn, M., & Wilson, S. (2002). Orthographic/phonological facilitation of naming responses in the picture-word task: An event-related fMRI study using overt vocal responding. NeuroImage, 16(4), 1084–1093. https://doi.org/10.1006/nimg.2002.1135
4. Dell, G. S., Schwartz, M. F., Nozari, N., Faseyitan, O., & Branch Coslett, H. (2013). Voxel-based lesion-parameter mapping: Identifying the neural correlates of a computational model of word production. Cognition, 128(3), 380–396. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2013.05.007
5. Fan, L., Li, H., Zhuo, J., Zhang, Y., Wang, J., Chen, L., Yang, Z., Chu, C., Xie, S., Laird, A. R., Fox, P. T., Eickhoff, S. B., Yu, C., & Jiang, T. (2016). The human Brainnetome atlas: A new brain atlas based on connectional architecture. Cerebral Cortex, 26(8), 3508–3526. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhw157
6. Indefrey, P. (2011). The spatial and temporal signatures of word production components: A critical update. Frontiers in Psychology, 2. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00255
7. Volfart, A., McMahon, K. L., & de Zubicaray, G. I. (2024). A comparison of denoising approaches for spoken word production related artefacts in continuous multiband fMRI data. Neurobiology of Language, 5(4), 901–921. https://doi.org/10.1162/nol_a_00151