Grey and white matter correlates of picture naming: Evidence from a voxel-based lesion analysis of the Boston Naming Test

Abstract

A number of recent studies utilizing both functional neuroimaging and lesion analysis techniques in neurologic patients have produced conflicting results with respect to the neural correlates of picture naming. Picture naming involves a number of cognitive processes, from visual perception/recognition to lexical-semantic retrieval to articulation. This middle process, the ability to retrieve a name associated with an object, has been attributed in some cases to posterior portions of the left lateral temporal lobe and in other cases, to anterior temporal cortex. In the current study, we used voxel-based lesion symptom mapping (VLSM) to identify neural correlates of picture naming in a large sample of well-characterized left hemisphere (LH) patients suffering from a range of naming deficits. We tested patients on the Boston Naming Test (BNT), a clinical, standardized measure of picture naming that is widely used in both clinical and research settings. We found that overall performance on the BNT was associated with a network of LH regions that included significant portions of the left anterior to posterior middle temporal gyrus (MTG) and superior temporal gyrus (STG) and underlying white matter, and extended into left inferior parietal cortex. However, when we added covariates to this analysis that controlled for deficits in visual recognition and motor speech in order to isolate brain regions specific to lexical-semantic retrieval, the significant regions that remained were confined almost exclusively to the left mid-posterior MTG and underlying white matter. These findings support the notion that a large network in left peri-Sylvian cortex supports picture naming, but that the left mid-posterior MTG and underlying white matter play a critical role in the core ability to retrieve a name associated with an object or picture.

The functional organization of the left STS: a large scale meta-analysis of PET and fMRI studies of healthy adults

“…Lesions in the left pMTG are known to be particularly detrimental to language comprehension (Boatman et al, 2000; Dronkers et al, 2004; Baldo et al, 2013). The left posterior superior temporal cortex is activated during language comprehension irrespective of the input modality, including during sign language processing in native signers (Bavelier et al, 1998; MacSweeney et al, 2006).…”

Lesion correlates of patholinguistic profiles in chronic aphasia: comparisons of syndrome-, modality- and symptom-level assessment

“…The left middle temporal gyrus and anterior inferior frontal gyrus have previously been observed in functional MRI studies to be sensitive to semantic priming (Gold et al, 2006) and to semantic relations (Thompson-Schill et al, 1997;Wagner et al, 2001;Snyder et al, 2007). Regarding lexico-semantics, there is converging evidence for the left superior and middle temporal gyrus and the anterior temporal lobe to house the lexicon (middle temporal gyrus; Baldo et al, 2013) and to take part in supramodal semantic integration (anterior temporal lobe; Patterson et al, 2007). Correspondingly, lesions in these temporal areas are associated with more semantic errors in naming tests Marangolo, 2007, 2010;Schwartz et al, 2009;Walker et al, 2011) and with a reduced type/token ratio in spontaneous speech, reflecting reduced semantic variability (Borovsky et al, 2007).…”

Dynamic reorganization of functional brain networks during picture naming

“…The underlying neural keystones of the picture naming task have been widely investigated previously from different modalities such as behavioral measures coupled with brain imaging (Baldo, Ar evalo, Patterson, & Dronkers, 2013), fMRI and PET [see (Price, 2012) for review], transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) (Schuhmann, Schiller, Goebel, & Sack, 2012), MEG signals (Levelt et al, 1998) and MEG reconstructed sources (Laaksonen, Kujala, Hult en, Liljestr€ om, & Salmelin, 2012).…”