All Talk and No Action: A Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study of Motor Cortex Activation during Action Word Production

Abstract

Abstract& A number of researchers have proposed that the premotor and motor areas are critical for the representation of words that refer to actions, but not objects. Recent evidence against this hypothesis indicates that the left premotor cortex is more sensitive to grammatical differences than to conceptual differences between words. However, it may still be the case that other anterior motor regions are engaged in processing a word's sensorimotor features. In the present study, we used single-and paired-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation to test the hypothesis that left primary motor cortex is activated during the retrieval of words (nouns and verbs) associated with specific actions. We found that activation in the motor cortex increased for action words compared with non-action words, but was not sensitive to the grammatical category of the word being produced. These results complement previous findings and support the notion that producing a word activates some brain regions relevant to the sensorimotor properties associated with that word regardless of its grammatical category. &

Subliminal display of action words interferes with motor planning: A combined EEG and kinematic study

“…One may therefore argue that the language-induced effects we found on movement preparation/execution could be explained by this grammatical class confound. However, considering previous studies that showed similar cortical activations over the motor cortex for action-related nouns and verbs (but not for action-related and visually-related nouns; Oliveri et al, 2004;Pulvermüller et al, 1999b), we suggest that our results are more plausibly explained by semantic differences between word categories (action-and non-action-related).…”

“…Two major models, the first based on Hebbian learning (Pulvermüller, 1996(Pulvermüller, , 2001(Pulvermüller, , 2005 and the second on the existence of the "mirror neuron system" (Fadiga & Craighero, 2004;Gallese & Lakoff, 2005;Rizzolatti & Arbib, 1998;Rizzolatti et al, 2001), suggest that processing of action words relies on activation of the motor programs used to perform, observe or simulate the actions referred to by words, either because of correlation learning (Pulvermüller, 2005) or because of a predisposition for imitation learning (Rizzolatti & Arbib, 1998). Evidence for such shared representations between word processing and sensory-motor information is provided by a large range of empirical data (Aziz-Zadeh et al, 2006;Boulenger et al, 2006;Boulenger et al, in press;Buccino et al, 2005;Glenberg & Kaschack, 2002;Glover et al, 2004;Hauk et al, 2004;Nazir et al, in press;Oliveri et al, 2004;Pulvermüller et al, 2005ab;Tettamanti et al, 2005;Zwaan & Taylor, 2006;see Fischer & Zwaan, in press, for a recent review). fMRI studies, for instance, have demonstrated somatotopic activation of motor and premotor cortices during processing of words or sentences referring to actions performed with arm, face or leg (AzizZadeh et al, 2006;Hauk et al, 2004;Tettamanti et al, 2005).…”

“…fMRI studies, for instance, have demonstrated somatotopic activation of motor and premotor cortices during processing of words or sentences referring to actions performed with arm, face or leg (AzizZadeh et al, 2006;Hauk et al, 2004;Tettamanti et al, 2005). Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) studies have also revealed that the left motor cortex excitability changes during processing of words or sentences denoting bodily actions Oliveri et al, 2004).…”

Differential effects of age-of-acquisition for concrete nouns and action verbs: Evidence for partly distinct representations?

“…As mentioned in the introduction, cortical motor regions are activated during processing of action-related language (Boulenger, Roy, Paulignan, Déprez, Jeannerod & Nazir, in press;Buccino, Riggio, Melli, Binkofski, Gallese & Rizzolatti, 2005;Hauk et al, 2004ab;Oliveri, Finocchiaro, Shapiro, Gangitano, Caramazza, & Pascual-Leone, 2004;Pulvermüller et al, 2005b;Pulvermüller, Hauk, Nikulin, & Ilmoniemi, 2005c;Shtyrov et al, 2004;Tettamanti et al, 2005). In a recent study, we could show that this language-related motor activity is significant to a point that it can interfere with the concurrent execution of overt motor behavior (Boulenger et al, in press).…”

On the dynamics of action representations evoked by names of manipulable objects.

“…In contrast to this outcome, a number of studies using TMS have observed positive congruency (i.e., facilitating) effects on the motor system induced by verbs denoting physical actions. For example, Papeo, Vallesi, Isaja, and Rumiati (2009) found that evoked potentials were enhanced in muscles of the hand when TMS was applied to the motor cortex and the language task incorporated verbs denoting hand actions (see also Oliveri et al, 2004).…”