Phonological Working Memory for Words and Nonwords in Cerebral Cortex

Abstract

Purpose: The primary purpose of this study was to identify the brain bases of phonological working memory (the shortterm maintenance of speech sounds) using behavioral tasks analogous to clinically sensitive assessments of nonword repetition. The secondary purpose of the study was to identify how individual differences in brain activation were related to participants' nonword repetition abilities. Method: We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure neurophysiological response during a nonword discrimination task derived from standard clinical assessments of phonological working memory. Healthy adult control participants (N = 16) discriminated pairs of real words or nonwords under varying phonological working memory load, which we manipulated by parametrically varying the number of syllables in target (non)words. Participants' cognitive and phonological abilities were also measured using standardized assessments. Results: Neurophysiological responses in bilateral superior temporal gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus, and supplementary motor area increased with greater phonological working memory load. Activation in left superior temporal gyrus during nonword discrimination correlated with participants' performance on standard clinical nonword repetition tests. Conclusion: These results suggest that phonological working memory is related to the function of cortical structures that canonically underlie speech perception and production. T he cognitive processes that underlie the short-term maintenance of language sounds are known collectively as phonological working memory. Phonological working memory is thought to support a wide range of linguistic behaviors, including novel word learning and vocabulary development, maintenance of information during sentence and discourse processing, and the acquisition of reading skill

Dissociating semantic and phonological contributions of the left inferior frontal gyrus to language production

“…Regardless of the polarity of the effect, the current study shows that the left pIFG exhibits a functional specialization for phonological processing in word production. This is in line with previous neuroimaging research arguing for an involvement of this area in syllabification (de Zubicaray & Piai, ; Indefrey, ), but also underlines its role in phonological working memory (Perrachione, Ghosh, Ostrovskaya, Gabrieli, & Kovelman, ; Zurowski et al, ). Critically, by employing a rhyme production task, our study extends previous studies using phonemic fluency tasks, in which speakers are asked to name as many words as possible starting with a given letter.…”

Effects of talker continuity and speech rate on auditory working memory

“…That is, as stimulus-specific details of speech are internally represented in memory (Lim et al, 2015(Lim et al, , 2018, speech spoken by one consistent talker might be more efficiently represented in working memory than speech spoken by different talkers, even if the speech carries the same linguistic message (see below for a discussion of potential differences in memory representations). This possibility is consistent with an emerging neurobiological model of speech working memory, which posits that maintenance of speech information in memory relies on the very same brain networks involved in speech perception and production (Hickok, 2009;Jacquemot & Scott, 2006;Perrachione, Ghosh, Ostrovskaya, Gabrieli, & Kovelman, 2017). Thus, the speech working memory store might remain susceptible to variability-related interference such as that observed during immediate recognition.…”

Common variation within the SETBP1 gene is associated with reading-related skills and patterns of functional neural activation

“…Previous studies showed that non-alphabetic tasks predict later reading performance (Lervåg and Hulme, 2009;Parrila et al, 2004) without being biased by reading experience (Rakhlin et al, 2013) or early differences in reading ability as for alphabetic items (Bowey and Muller, 2005). Deficits in pWM have been consistently documented in language-based learning disabilities and usually persist throughout life, suggesting a deficit rather than a developmental delay model (Perrachione et al, 2017;Swanson et al, 2009). Phonological WM is thought to support a wide range of linguistic behaviors, including novel word learning and vocabulary development, maintenance of information during sentence and discourse processing, and the acquisition of reading skill.…”