Different brain activation patterns during production of animals versus artefacts: a PET activation study on category-specific processing.
To study neural correlates of category-specific processing, we measured relative cerebral blood flow changes by PET (oxygen-15) in young healthy subjects while they produced exemplars of animals or artefacts to written subcategory prompts. In comparison to a baseline (word reading), production of animal names elicited increased rCBF in the right inferior temporal region. This fits to recent lesion data on semantic impairment with animals, as well as imaging data on object recognition and semantic retrieval. In our study, it may represent an involvement of visual imagery in generation of animal names. In contrast, production of artefact names elicited increased rCBF in frontoparietal regions previously related to attention and mental effort.
Laine
Matti
M
Department of Psychology, Abo Akademi University, FIN-20500 Turku, Finland. matti.laine@abo.fi
Rinne
Juha O
JO
Hiltunen
Jaana
J
Kaasinen
Valtteri
V
Sipilä
Hannu
H
D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000502:physiology; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000502:physiology; D014055:Tomography, Emission-Computed