Verbal and design fluency in patients with frontal lobe lesions

Abstract

The ability to generate items belonging to categories in verbal fluency tasks has been attributed to frontal cortex. Nonverbal fluency (e.g., design fluency) has been assessed separately and found to rely on the right hemisphere or right frontal cortex. The current study assessed both verbal and nonverbal fluency in a single group of patients with focal, frontal lobe lesions and age- and education-matched control participants. In the verbal fluency task, participants generated items belonging to both letter cues (F, A, and S) and category cues (animals and boys' names). In the design fluency task, participants generated novel designs by connecting dot arrays with 4 straight lines. A switching condition was included in both verbal and design fluency tasks and required participants to switch back and forth between different sets (e.g., between naming fruits and furniture). As a group, patients with frontal lobe lesions were impaired, compared to control participants, on both verbal and design fluency tasks. Patients with left frontal lesions performed worse than patients with right frontal lesions on the verbal fluency task, but the 2 groups performed comparably on the design fluency task. Both patients and control participants were impacted similarly by the switching conditions. These results suggest that verbal fluency is more dependent on left frontal cortex, while nonverbal fluency tasks, such as design fluency, recruit both right and left frontal processes. (JINS, 2001, 7, 586–596.)

N-acetyl aspartate in autism spectrum disorders: Regional effects and relationship to fMRI activation

“…Functional imaging studies of verbal fluency have reported left inferior frontal and dorsolateral prefrontal activation (Abrahams et al, 2003;Fu et al, 2002;Gaillard et al, 2000;Gourovitch et al, 2000;Paulesu et al, 1997;Phelps et al, 1997) and right cerebellar activation (Fu et al, 2002;Hubrich-Ungureanu et al, 2002;Weiss et al, 2003). In addition, lesion studies support the role of the frontal lobes (e.g., Baldo et al, 2001) and cerbellum in executive function tasks (Akshoomoff et al, 1992;Levisohn et al, 2000;Paradiso et al, 1997;Riva and Giorgi, 2000;Schmahmann and Sherman, 1997). Although cerebellar activation did not meet criteria for statistical significance in our sample, and therefore was not correlated to verbal fluency performance, MRS was collected from the region of the cerebellum previously reported to be involved in the verbal fluency task in healthy volunteers (see above) and in our pilot study (Kleinhans et al, 2005b).…”

Thyroid hormones and cognitive functioning in healthy, euthyroid women: A correlational study

“…Imaging studies on patients with brain lesions demonstrate that both design fluency and word fluency are dependent on frontal lobe processes (Benton, 1968;Bornstein, 1986;Milner, 1964;Jones-Gotman and Milner, 1977;Ruff et al, 1994;Baldo and Shimamura, 1998) and scores on these same tests were positively correlated with TgAB levels in the present study. Indeed, design fluency is negatively affected by right frontal cortical lesions whereas word fluency is impaired in patients with left frontal cortical lesions (Jones-Gotman and Milner, 1977;Baldo et al, 2001). Performance on both word fluency and design fluency tasks is also impaired in people with dementia (Bigler et al, 1988).…”

Impulsivity-related cognition in alcohol dependence: Is it moderated by DRD2/ANKK1 gene status and executive dysfunction?

“…It involves 3 trials, each requiring participants to generate as many words as possible in 60 s that begin with a particular letter (F, A, then S). The COWAT has a 6-month test-retest reliability of .74 (Ruff, Light, Parker, & Levin, 1996) and is sensitive to dysfunction in the frontal and temporal brain regions (Baldo, Shimamura, Delis, Kramer, & Kaplan, 2001;Chertkow & Bub, 1990;Troyer, Moscovitch, & Winocur, 1997).…”