Repetitive verbal behaviors are not always harmful signs: Compensatory plasticity within the language network in aphasia

Torres‐Prioris, María José; López-Barroso, Diana; Roé-Vellvé, Núria; Paredes-Pacheco, José; Dávila, Guadalupe; Berthier, Marcelo L.

doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2018.12.004

Cited by 15 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…Tentatively, this could indicate that inverted words were accessed directly as full lexical units, as suggested above, although further research would be needed to test this conjecture. Alternatively, note that the ventral route can afford compensatory mechanisms when the dorsal stream is overloaded 22 , not developed, or dysfunctional [23][24][25][26] . Therefore, the distinctive diffusion pattern found in the UF and ILF may be linked to the systematic recruitment of supporting ventral mechanisms upon excessive demands placed on dorsal routes by continual practice of backward speech.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neurocognitive signatures of phonemic sequencing in expert backward speakers

Torres‐Prioris

López-Barroso

Càmara

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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Despite its prolific growth, neurolinguistic research on phonemic sequencing has largely neglected the study of individuals with highly developed skills in this domain. To bridge this gap, we report multidimensional signatures of two experts in backward speech, that is, the capacity to produce utterances by reversing the order of phonemes while retaining their identity. Our approach included behavioral assessments of backward and forward speech alongside neuroimaging measures of voxel-based morphometry, diffusion tensor imaging, and resting-state functional connectivity. Relative to controls, both backward speakers exhibited behavioral advantages for reversing words and sentences of varying complexity, irrespective of working memory skills. These patterns were accompanied by increased grey matter volume, higher mean diffusivity, and enhanced functional connectivity along dorsal and ventral stream regions mediating phonological and other linguistic operations, with complementary support of areas subserving associative-visual and domain-general processes. Still, the specific loci of these neural patterns differed between both subjects, suggesting individual variability in the correlates of expert backward speech. Taken together, our results offer new vistas on the domain of phonemic sequencing, while illuminating neuroplastic patterns underlying extraordinary language abilities. When visiting the local barber shop, a native of La Laguna, Spain, may be surprised by the speech of some fellow citizens. He might be greeted with the utterance nasbue chesno and fail to understand it at all. With time, however, he may realize that the phrase was a backward rendition of buenas noches (good evening) and that this peculiar way of speaking is quite widespread in this town. So much so, in fact, that a group of citizens demand that UNESCO acknowledge their linguistic extravaganza as intangible cultural heritage. Still, theirs might be a lost cause. Although word inversion is also part of other sociolects, such as Argentine lunfardo, the Canary Academy of Language has declared that this phenomenon has no scholarly value. Yet, that position is arguably shortsighted. Backward speech constitutes an extraordinary ability to quickly reverse words, pseudowords, and even sentences, which requires reordering phonemes while retaining their identity. Therefore, it offers a useful model to study phoneme sequencing as a key stage of phonological-phonetic encoding-i.e., the capacity to select, retrieve, and temporarily arrange phonemic information to set up an articulatory plan 1,2. Based on this premise, the present study offers a novel approach to phonemic sequencing mechanisms by examining behavioral, neuroanatomical, and neurofunctional signatures of expertise in backward speech. Pioneering behavioral research on phoneme sequencing was mainly concerned with speech errors in healthy 3-5 and brain-damaged 6-8 subjects, giving rise to serial associative, frame-based, and dynamic control signal psycholinguistic models 3. Although neuroimagin...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neurocognitive signatures of phonemic sequencing in expert backward speakers

Torres‐Prioris

López-Barroso

Càmara

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

Self Cite

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“…In contrast to the long-lasting localizationist view of language neurobiology as residing solely in Broca's and Wernicke's areas, numerous pieces of convincing evidences indicated that language function relies on interconnected cortico-subcortical regions and bilaterally-distributed connections, forming the language network (Duffau et al., 2014; Fedorenko and Thompson-Schill, 2014; Luo et al., 2019; Torres-Prioris et al., 2019; Tremblay and Dick, 2016). In this delocalized network-based framework, language regions in the frontal, temporal and parietal lobes, and the right cerebellum are structurally and/or functionally connected, forming large-scale language (sub) networks for linguistic processing.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Resting-state functional connectivity predicts individual language impairment of patients with left hemispheric gliomas involving language network

Yuan

Zhang

Yan

et al. 2019

NeuroImage: Clinical

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HighlightsMultivariate machine learning-based prediction models of rsFCs were constructed to predict individual aphasia quotient (AQ) for LGG and HGG patients.Individual whole brain rsFCs significantly predicated AQ for LGG and HGG patients.Canonical language regions and their connections showed most predictive contributions for the LGG model, suggesting large functional reshaping.The functional network of HGG patients for language processing showed heavy dependence on connections of the left cerebro-cerebellar connections, limbic system, and the temporal, occipital, and prefrontal lobes.

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“…Cortical neurodegeneration in nfvPPA and lvPPA is heightened in anterior and posterior regions, respectively, of the left perisylvian speech‐language network (PSLN) governing language repetition [1]. Involvement of the PSLN in nfvPPA and lvPPA mostly impairs sentence repetition [3,4] and might be a hindrance for the emergence of echolalia since this emanates from the uncontrolled activity of a relatively spared PSLN [5,6] By contrast, the PSLN in the svPPA and in the behavioural variant of fronto‐temporal dementia (bvFTD) is spared and this would explain why echolalia may frequently be observed in these two conditions. Mechanistically, echolalia in svPPA and in advanced stages of bvFTD occurs because neurodegeneration involving the anterior temporal and/or frontal cortices is ideally placed to “release” the activity of the anterior PSLN leading to verbal echoing [5,6].…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Since Ota and colleagues did not consider repetitive questions asked by patients to reinforce word meaning access as a form of mitigated echolalia, they probably overlooked its occurrence in their five patients with svPPA. Although it is admitted that sometimes it is difficult separating normal repetition from mitigated echolalia, elsewhere it has been argued that repetitive echoing of words and sentence fragments that sound ambiguous, equivocal or are poorly understood represent instances of mitigated echolalia in patients with svPPA [5,6]. For example, on the yes/no questions subtests of the WAB, when answering the question “Will paper burn in fire?” a woman with svPPA evaluated in our unit echoed some words, “The paper?...…”

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confidence: 99%

“…yes!”, most likely to grasp their meaning. It has been suggested that instances of mitigated echolalia, like this, in patients with svPPA probably result from damage to the left inferior frontal‐occipital fasciculus (ventral stream) in the anterior temporal lobe coupled with compensatory activity of the arcuate fasciculus (dorsal stream) and mirror neurons in the PSLN [5,6]. Anyhow, further studies on svPPA are required to demarcate the boundaries between normal repetition and mitigated echolalia.…”

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confidence: 99%

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