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Comparative Study
. 2010 Nov 17;30(46):15450-6.
doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3783-10.2010.

Ventrolateral prefrontal cortex plays an executive regulation role in comprehension of abstract words: convergent neuropsychological and repetitive TMS evidence

Paul Hoffman  1 , Elizabeth Jefferies, Matthew A Lambon Ralph
Affiliations
Comparative Study

Ventrolateral prefrontal cortex plays an executive regulation role in comprehension of abstract words: convergent neuropsychological and repetitive TMS evidence

Paul Hoffman et al. J Neurosci. .

Abstract

Neuroimaging studies reliably reveal ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) activation for processing of abstract relative to concrete words, but the cause of this effect is unclear. Here, in a convergent neuropsychological and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) investigation, we tested the hypothesis that abstract words require VLPFC because they depend heavily on the semantic-executive control processes mediated by this region. Specifically, we hypothesized that accessing the meanings of abstract words require more executive regulation because they have variable, context-dependent meanings. In the neuropsychology component of the study, aphasic patients with multimodal semantic deficits following VLPFC lesions had impaired comprehension of abstract words, but this deficit was ameliorated by providing a sentence cue that placed the word in a specific context. Concrete words were better comprehended and showed more limited benefit from the cues. In the second part of the study, rTMS applied to left VLPFC in healthy subjects slowed reaction times to abstract but not concrete words, but only when words were presented out of context. TMS had no effect when words were preceded by a contextual cue. These converging results indicate that VLPFC plays an executive regulation role in the processing of abstract words. This role is less critical when words are presented with a context that guides the system toward a particular meaning or interpretation. Regulation is less important for concrete words because their meanings are constrained by their physical referents and do not tend to vary with context.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Structural CT and MRI images for patients. BB, KA, KH, LS, and NY, Patient initials.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Lesion overlap map for patients and site of stimulation for rTMS. Left, Lesion overlap map for five of the six patients, showing maximum overlap in BA 45. Lighter shades indicate regions damaged in more patients. No scan was available for patient PG, though a radiologist's report of an earlier CT scan indicates left prefrontal lesion. Right, Site stimulated in rTMS experiment. Crosshairs indicate coordinates of rTMS site. Coordinates are in MNI space.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Figure 3. Results of neuropsychological study. A, Proportion of correct responses in each condition. B, Effect of contextual and irrelevant cues, relative to no cue condition, calculated by subtracting accuracy in the no-cue condition from accuracy in contextual cue and irrelevant cue conditions. Bars indicate SE of mean, adjusted to reflect the between-condition variance used in repeated-measure designs (Loftus and Masson, 1994).
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Results of rTMS study. A, Reaction times before and after rTMS in each condition. B, Difference between pre-TMS and post-TMS reaction times for each condition. *, Significant TMS effect (paired-samples t test; p < 0.05). Bars indicate SE of mean, adjusted to reflect the between-condition variance used in repeated-measure designs (Loftus and Masson, 1994). Conc, Concrete; Abs, abstract.
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