A coordinate-based ALE functional MRI meta-analysis of brain activation during verbal fluency tasks in healthy control subjects.
BACKGROUND
The processing of verbal fluency tasks relies on the coordinated activity of a number of brain areas, particularly in the frontal and temporal lobes of the left hemisphere. Recent studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the neural networks subserving verbal fluency functions have yielded divergent results especially with respect to a parcellation of the inferior frontal gyrus for phonemic and semantic verbal fluency. We conducted a coordinate-based activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis on brain activation during the processing of phonemic and semantic verbal fluency tasks involving 28 individual studies with 490 healthy volunteers.


RESULTS
For phonemic as well as for semantic verbal fluency, the most prominent clusters of brain activation were found in the left inferior/middle frontal gyrus (LIFG/MIFG) and the anterior cingulate gyrus. BA 44 was only involved in the processing of phonemic verbal fluency tasks, BA 45 and 47 in the processing of phonemic and semantic fluency tasks.


CONCLUSIONS
Our comparison of brain activation during the execution of either phonemic or semantic verbal fluency tasks revealed evidence for spatially different activation in BA 44, but not other regions of the LIFG/LMFG (BA 9, 45, 47) during phonemic and semantic verbal fluency processing.
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Centre Mainz, Untere Zahlbacher Str, 8, Mainz, Germany. stefwagn@uni-mainz.de.
Stefanie
S
Wagner
Alexandra
A
Sebastian
Klaus
K
Lieb
Oliver
O
Tüscher
André
A
Tadić
D000200:Action Potentials / Q000502:physiology*; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000502:physiology*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D063132:Connectome / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D008959:Models, Neurological; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000502:physiology*; D012016:Reference Values; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology*