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Brain correlates of adjective and noun production in healthy speakers and two people with aphasia

Kati Renvall1, 2, 3*, Hana Burianová4 and Lyndsey Nickels2, 3
  • 1 University of Turku, Department of Psychology and Speech-Language Pathology, Finland
  • 2 NHMRC Centre for Clinical Research Excellence (CCRE) in Aphasia Rehabilitation, Australia
  • 3 Macquarie University, Department of Cognitive Science, ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Australia
  • 4 The University of Queensland, Centre for Advanced Imaging, Australia

Background: Existing aphasia research includes few studies that have targeted words other than concrete nouns or verbs (but see Menn & Obler, 1990; Milman, Vega-Mendoza, & Clendenen, 2014), despite the fact that the most frequent words in everyday conversations are abstract and include words from other word classes (e.g., adjectives and adverbs; Renvall, Nickels, & Davidson, 2013). Moreover, people with aphasia (PWA) typically have greater difficulty with abstract items, making it difficult for them to participate in many conversational topics (e.g., Armstrong, Mortensen, Ciccone, & Godecke, 2012). Aims: Our primary aim was to collect normative behavioural and neural data from healthy adult speakers and reference data from PWA on a novel word-production task, developed specifically to investigate the mechanisms underlying adjective production. This aimed to provide a baseline for subsequent treatment studies. Methods & Procedures: Behavioural Task: In a novel semantic association word-production task, participants produced either nouns (N) or adjectives (ADJ) in response to written nouns or adjectives serving as cue words in four conditions (N-N, N-ADJ, ADJ-N, ADJ-ADJ). For example, in the N-ADJ condition, participants were asked to read a noun (e.g., humour) and produce a semantically associated adjective (e.g., funny) within 5 seconds. Based on the performance of 10 university students, we selected 30 noun and 30 adjective cue words which reliably resulted in the production of another noun or adjective depending on the condition. The cue words were matched (across conditions) for number of letters, written word frequency, concreteness, and response latency. Participants: We scanned fifteen healthy older adults (mean age=63.3 years; SD=7.4; 5 females) and two PWA (DM: 68-year-old male, left MCA infarction; MG: 72-year-old male, left anterior and posterior MCA infarction). Imaging: Anatomical and functional magnetic imaging was conducted using a 3-T Siemens Magnetom Verio scanner with a 12-channel head coil. We used the semantic association tasks in an event-related design by counterbalancing the order of the four conditions within each run. Verbal responses were collected using an MRI-compatible microphone and analysed for accuracy of the word class. Results and Conclusions: Healthy adult speakers showed both similarities and differences between adjective and noun production: Both engaged areas known to be used in language production, articulation, and sensorimotor processing, such as the inferior frontal gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, and basal ganglia, but adjective production engaged them more, suggesting more cognitive effort. Compared to nouns, adjective production greater engaged the left middle and superior temporal gyrus, and left supramarginal gyrus, suggesting more semantic processing. Neither PWA showed any common pattern between noun and adjective production. MG showed more cerebellar-cortical activation during adjective production, compared to noun production, suggesting functional compensation outside of the primary language production network. DM showed increased right-hemispheric activation but only when adjective production followed an adjective cue, suggesting a specific deficit in adjective production. Finally, the paradigm had test-retest reliability in areas of activation, suggesting that it could be appropriate for measuring change in subsequent aphasia treatment studies.

References

Armstrong, E., Mortensen, L., Ciccone, N., & Godecke, E. (2012). Expressing opinions and feelings in a conversational setting. Seminars in Speech and Language, 33, 16-26. doi: 10.1055/s-0031-1301160

Menn, L. & L. K. Obler (Eds.) (1990). Agrammatic Aphasia: A cross-language narrative sourcebook. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Milman, L., Vega-Mendoza, M., & Clendenen, D. (2014). Integrated training for aphasia: An application of part–whole learning to treat lexical retrieval, sentence production, and discourse-level communications in three cases of nonfluent aphasia. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 23, 105-119. doi:10.1044/2014_AJSLP-12-0054

Renvall, K., Nickels, L. & Davidson, B. (2013). Functionally relevant items in the treatment of aphasia (part I): Challenges for current practice. Aphasiology, 27, 636-650. doi: 10.1080/02687038.2013.786804

Keywords: Aphasia, Adjective production, semantic associations, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), normative data

Conference: 54th Annual Academy of Aphasia Meeting, Llandudno, United Kingdom, 16 Oct - 18 Oct, 2016.

Presentation Type: Poster Sessions

Topic: Academy of Aphasia

Citation: Renvall K, Burianová H and Nickels L (2016). Brain correlates of adjective and noun production in healthy speakers and two people with aphasia. Front. Psychol. Conference Abstract: 54th Annual Academy of Aphasia Meeting. doi: 10.3389/conf.fpsyg.2016.68.00025

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Received: 23 Apr 2016; Published Online: 15 Aug 2016.

* Correspondence: Dr. Kati Renvall, University of Turku, Department of Psychology and Speech-Language Pathology, Turku, 20014, Finland, kati.renvall@utu.fi