Generating animal and tool names: an fMRI study of effective connectivity.
The present fMRI study of semantic fluency for animal and tool names provides further evidence for category-specific brain activations, and reports task-related changes in effective connectivity among defined cerebral regions. Two partially segregated systems of functional integration were highlighted: the tool condition was associated with an enhancement of connectivity within left hemispheric regions, including the inferior prefrontal and premotor cortex, the inferior parietal lobule and the temporo-occipital junction; the animal condition was associated with greater coupling among left visual associative regions. These category-specific functional differences extend the evidence for anatomical specialization to lexical search tasks, and provide for the first time evidence of category-specific patterns of functional integration in word-retrieval.
Vitali
Paolo
P
Scientific Institute San Raffaele, Milan, Italy. vitali.paolo@hsr.it
Abutalebi
Jubin
J
Tettamanti
Marco
M
Rowe
James
J
Scifo
Paola
P
Fazio
Ferruccio
F
Cappa
Stefano F
SF
Perani
Daniela
D
D001245:Association Learning / Q000502:physiology; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology; D011601:Psychophysics; D012660:Semantics