Presentation
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Speech monitoring activations in the midcingulate cortex depend on cingulate sulcal morphology.
Poster C7 in Poster Session C, Wednesday, October 25, 10:15 am - 12:00 pm CEST, Espace Vieux-Port
This poster is part of the Sandbox Series.
Lydia DOROKHOVA1, Jean-Luc Anton1, Julien Sein1, Bruno Nazarian1, Valérie Chanoine1, Pascal Belin1, Kep Kee Loh2, Elin Runnqvist1; 1Aix Marseille Université, 2McGill University
Self-monitoring of speech recruits the midcingulate cortex (MCC) region in the human brain (Runnqvist et al., 2021). This region shows substantial interindividual variations in sulcal morphology: while everyone has a cingulate sulcus (CgS) in both hemispheres, some individuals also have a paracingulate sulcus (PCgS) in one or both hemispheres. Critically, cingulate sulcal morphology has been demonstrated to influence both anatomical and functional organisation in the MCC region. When a PCgS is present, BA32 occupies the paracingulate gyrus (Vogt et al., 1995), and likewise, functional activations associated with mouth movements and vocal feedback monitoring are also found on the paracingulate gyrus (e.g., Loh et al; 2018, 2020). Here, we wanted to investigate whether functional activations associated with speech error monitoring are influenced by whether or not a PCgS is present. Such an influence would support the hypothesis that simpler feedback control circuitry used for movements and basic vocalizations has been recycled to sustain the optimizing of language production. 24 participants performed a speech production task designed to induce errors (Runnqvist et al., 2021) in an event-related fMRI protocol. By contrasting the BOLD activation in trials where participants commit a speech error with trials where participants make a correct production, this paradigm could reveal the neural activations associated with monitoring of overt speech errors. To determine if there was an influence of cingulate sulcal morphology on activations associated to speech errors, we first classified each participant hemispheres into three groups based on their cingulate sulcal morphology: 1) Prominent – a prominent paracingulate sulcus that runs dorsal and parallel to the cingulate sulcus, 2) Absent – only a cingulate sulcus, and 3) Emerging – short sulcal segments above the cingulate sulcus. Next, we averaged the BOLD contrast corresponding to error trials minus correct trials across hemispheres in each of the three cingulate morphology groups. We observed that patterns of activation in the MCC region differ between the three groups: In the PCgS Absent group, two significant activation peaks were observed in the MCC, within the cingulate sulcus: An anterior peak at the level of the posterior limit of the genu and a posterior one at the level of the anterior commissure. In the PCgS Prominent group, two significant peaks were also observed in the MCC, an anterior one in the cingulate sulcus, and a posterior one in the paracingulate sulcus. Notably, the two peaks were found at the same anterior-posterior position as the two peaks in the PCgS Absent group. The emerging PCgS group showed a pattern of activation that looked like a combination of the other two groups. Our results underscore the importance of considering individual cingulate sulcal morphology when localising speech monitoring activations in the MCC. Importantly, we also revealed potential anatomical landmarks for localising speech monitoring cortical regions in individual brains which are highly valuable for neurosurgical interventions and for further functional investigations. Finally, these findings suggest an evolutionary link from the control of basic movement and vocalizations to that of language production.
Topic Areas: Language Production,