Neural processing of overt word generation in healthy individuals: The effect of age and word knowledge

Distinct functional connectivity of the hippocampus during semantic and phonemic fluency

“…To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that used functional connectivity analysis and showed that the right and the left hippocampus are an integral part of the semantic network, but not the phonemic network, as well as the existence of task selectivity in hippocampal functional connectivity, during verbal word fluency paradigms. In light of recent findings showing decline in semantic and phonemic fluency performance as well as changes in brain-related activity in middle age (45-49 years) (Nagels et al, 2012;Singh-Manoux et al, 2012), present findings should be interpreted within the age range reported here (19-37 years).…”

Do bilinguals show neural differences with monolinguals when processing their native language?

“…Increased activation in the right pSTG has been observed while bilinguals named pictures. Previous literature has associated the right pSTG activity with poorer word knowledge during a semantic fluency task (Nagels et al, 2012). That is, individuals with poorer word knowledge and use (i.e., vocabulary) activate this area when producing words.…”

Correspondence of executive function related functional and anatomical alterations in aging brain

“…Paxton et al (2008) reported two experiments with independent subject samples, so the two experiments were treated as independent. Esposito et al (1999) and Nagels et al (2012) examined linear correlation between task related activation and age, while the other experiments directly compared the task related activations between the older and younger groups. All of the included studies but Prakash et al (2012) reported hyperactivation for the older group, and fifteen studies also reported hypoactivation.…”