On the relationship between fluid intelligence, gesture production, and brain structure

Wartenburger, Isabell; Kühn, Esther; Sassenberg, Uta; Foth, Manja; Franz, Elizabeth A.; Meer, Elke van der

doi:10.1016/j.intell.2009.11.001

Cited by 27 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 76 publications

(94 reference statements)

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“…Avenues for future research on these and related themes include more generally exploring the relationship between individual differences in aspects of language and communication, brain structure and function, and more broad cognitive capacities such as fluid intelligence (Wartenburger et al, 2010). Other avenues for future research include examining the relative contributions of experience-dependent plasticity, and of factors that may be more 'innate' in explaining not only individual differences, but also in explaining the potential for learning and plasticity, or in domain-specific aptitudes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Brain structural correlates of individual differences at low-to high-levels of the language processing hierarchy: A review of new approaches to imaging research

Golestani

2012

International Journal of Bilingualism

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In the domain of language and audition, studies have shown large individual differences, within the normal range (i.e. in healthy, non-expert individuals), in performance on tasks involving speech sound processing, vocabulary knowledge, and reading, these in both monolingual and bilingual participants and in native and non-native language contexts. These individual differences have often been related to individual differences in brain structure. Evidence for structural differences is especially striking since brain structure can be assumed to be more stable, or less malleable, than brain function. Brain function, on the other hand, can be expected to change, or be plastic, after only very short periods of training/learning. The present paper provides a review of studies that have investigated the brain structural correlates of normative individual differences in aspects of language-related performance, these spanning a hierarchy in terms of the underlying complexity of processing and brain networks involved. Specifically, the review is structured so as to describe work examining the following domains, which involve progressively increasing levels of complexity in terms of the posited perceptual/cognitive sub-functions involved: 1) lower-level acoustic processing; 2) phonetic processing, including non-native speech sound learning, learning to use pitch information linguistically, non-native speech sound articulation, and phonetic expertise; 3) working memory for verbal and for pitch information; 4) semantics, in the context of lexical knowledge and of semantic memory; 5)reading; 6) syntax, both natural and artificial; 7) bilingualism; and finally 8) executive control of language in the contexts of fluency and of speech-in-noise processing. Results are discussed and synthesized in the context of lower to higher-level brain regions thought to be functionally involved in these respective domains, which are very often, if not always, the very ones that structurally partly predict domain-specific performance

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Brain structural correlates of individual differences at low-to high-levels of the language processing hierarchy: A review of new approaches to imaging research

Golestani

2012

International Journal of Bilingualism

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“…To our knowledge, there has only been one study to investigate gesture production and brain volume [Wartenburger et al, ]. This investigation implicated cortical thickness in the left temporal lobe and the inferior frontal gyrus; however, gestures with semantic content (representation gestures) were looked at broadly, and beat gestures were not included in these analyses [Wartenburger et al, ]. Thus, our work provides a novel investigation of beat and metaphoric gesture production in a naturalistic setting, with respect to brain morphology.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beat and metaphoric gestures are differentially associated with regional cerebellar and cortical volumes

Millman

Mittal

2015

Human Brain Mapping

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Gestures represent an integral aspect of interpersonal communication, and they are closely linked with language and thought. Brain regions for language processing overlap with those for gesture processing. Two types of gesticulation, beat gestures and metaphoric gestures are particularly important for understanding the taxonomy of co-speech gestures. Here, we investigated gesture production during taped interviews with respect to regional brain volume. First, we were interested in whether beat gesture production is associated with similar regions as metaphoric gesture. Second, we investigated whether cortical regions associated with metaphoric gesture processing are linked to gesture production based on correlations with brain volumes. We found that beat gestures are uniquely related to regional volume in cerebellar regions previously implicated in discrete motor timing. We suggest that these gestures may be an artifact of the timing processes of the cerebellum that are important for the timing of vocalizations. Second, our findings indicate that brain volumes in regions of the left hemisphere previously implicated in metaphoric gesture processing are positively correlated with metaphoric gesture production. Together, this novel work extends our understanding of left hemisphere regions associated with gesture to indicate their importance in gesture production, and also suggests that beat gestures may be especially unique. This provides important insight into the taxonomy of co-speech gestures, and also further insight into the general role of the cerebellum in language.

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“…Even though people with aphasia have been a focus in the studies on neural correlates of gesture production (e.g. Ahlsén, 1991; Akhavan et al, 2017; Cicone et al, 1979; Dipper et al, 2011; Hadar et al, 1998; Pritchard et al, 2013; Wartenburger et al, 2010; Wilkinson, 2013), relatively few studies have investigated specific brain areas associated with spontaneous co-speech gesture production (e.g. Göksun et al, 2013, 2015; Hogrefe et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These attempts to reduce neuroimaging artifacts create ecologically limited environments that do not capture the crucial components of spontaneous co-speech gesture production (Bernard et al, 2015). Due to these constraints that arise during the neuroimaging, associating gesture production patterns with neuropsychological evidence or structural properties of the brain areas of interest provide a promising line of inquiry (Bernard et al, 2015; Wartenburger et al, 2010). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The deficiencies in gesture production that are associated with the left anterior temporal lobe and the left inferior frontal regions are attributed to semantic retrieval deficiencies and problems in executive control when choosing between alternate modes of communication (Hogrefe et al, 2017). These areas are implicated in structural (Bernard et al, 2015; Wartenburger et al, 2010) and functional (Willems & Hagoort, 2007; Willems, Özyürek, & Hagoort, 2007; Straube et al, 2011) neuroimaging studies of gesture comprehension conducted with neurotypical individuals as well. By analyzing structural morphology in relation to co-speech gesture production, Wartenburger and colleagues (2010) also revealed that the production of conceptual gestures is related to cortical thickness in the left temporal lobe and inferior frontal gyrus.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The relationship between co-speech gesture production and macrolinguistic discourse abilities in people with focal brain injury

et al. 2018

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Brain damage is associated with linguistic deficits and might alter co-speech gesture production. Gesture production after focal brain injury has been mainly investigated with respect to intrasentential rather than discourse-level linguistic processing. In this study, we examined 1) spontaneous gesture production patterns of people with left hemisphere damage (LHD) or right hemisphere damage (RHD) in a narrative setting, 2) the neural structures associated with deviations in spontaneous gesture production in these groups, and 3) the relationship between spontaneous gesture production and discourse level linguistic processes (narrative complexity and evaluation competence). Individuals with LHD or RHD (17 people in each group) and neurotypical controls (n = 13) narrated a story from a picture book. Results showed that increase in gesture production for LHD individuals was associated with less complex narratives and lesions of individuals who produced more gestures than neurotypical individuals overlapped in frontal-temporal structures and basal ganglia. Co-speech gesture production of RHD individuals positively correlated with their evaluation competence in narrative. Lesions of RHD individuals who produced more gestures overlapped in the superior temporal gyrus and the inferior parietal lobule. Overall, LHD individuals produced more gestures than neurotypical individuals. The groups did not differ in their use of different gesture forms except that LHD individuals produced more deictic gestures per utterance than RHD individuals and controls. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that co-speech gesture production interacts with macro-linguistic levels of discourse and this interaction is affected by the hemispheric lateralization of discourse abilities.

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On the relationship between fluid intelligence, gesture production, and brain structure

Cited by 27 publications

References 76 publications

Brain structural correlates of individual differences at low-to high-levels of the language processing hierarchy: A review of new approaches to imaging research

Brain structural correlates of individual differences at low-to high-levels of the language processing hierarchy: A review of new approaches to imaging research

Beat and metaphoric gestures are differentially associated with regional cerebellar and cortical volumes

The relationship between co-speech gesture production and macrolinguistic discourse abilities in people with focal brain injury

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