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Stimulating the language network at the subject level: What has more effect - the brevity of Mark Twain or sweeping sentences by Charles Dickens?
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Poster C115 in Poster Session C, Wednesday, October 25, 10:15 am - 12:00 pm CEST, Espace Vieux-Port
Nicole E. Neef1, Zenab Javed1, Manuel Unnerstall1, Julia My Van Kube1, Peter Dechent2, Christian H. Riedel1; 1Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Neuroradiology, University Medical Center Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany, 2Department of Cognitive Neurology, MR Research in Neurosciences, University Medical Center Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
To enhance the safety and efficacy of craniotomy in patients with lesions in language-eloquent brain regions, obtaining reliable, functional maps of the language network and ascertaining language lateralization beforehand is beneficial. However, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) examinations of language are time-consuming and strain both the cognitive resources of patients and the economic resources of the diagnostic institution. Therefore, we tested the efficiency of newly generated German stimuli to optimize measurement times. Twenty-one healthy subjects (M = 40 years, Min = 20 years, Max = 61 years, 14 women) were tested in a 3T MAGNETOM Prisma Fit. During functional measurement, subjects read 4-, 8-, and 12-word sentences and pseudoword lists or texts and pseudoword texts, each followed by a decision task. We sourced our sentences from the extensive collection of literature classics available in the Gutenberg Project library. We controlled stimuli for the number of words, word length, number of syllables, number of letters, type-token ratio, and number of lemmas. Measurement times per condition ranged from 12 minutes for 4-word sentences to 8 minutes for 12-word sentences and texts. First, we quantified brain activity using a region-of-interest analysis with subject-specific, functionally defined language-sensitive brain regions (Fedorenko et al., 2010). Subsequently, we employed t-tests on the individual level to examine the impact of sentence length and text coherence on the magnitude of activation. On the individual level, texts and sentences resulted in robust activations of cortical and subcortical language-sensitive regions, including the inferior frontal gyrus, posterior middle frontal gyrus, superior frontal gyrus, superior and middle temporal regions, angular gyrus, and the cerebellum, in line with previous observations (Fedorenko et al., 2010; Lipkin et al., 2022; Mahowald & Fedorenko, 2016). Within each subject, texts evoked significantly larger effect sizes compared to sentences. Increasing sentence lengths also led to increasing effect sizes, but not as consistent as the text condition in each individual participant. Long sentences and coherent texts have the potential to convey complex meanings in a richer context compared to short sentences. They activated the language network more strongly and saved up to four minutes of measurement time compared to short 4-word sentences. The choice of stimulus makes it possible to reduce the fMRI scan time by a third without losing signal. As efficiency and personalization continue to improve, integrating fMRI examinations into preoperative neuroradiological diagnostics is expected to become more frequent in the future and thus facilitate tailored therapies and enhance patient outcomes. References: Fedorenko, E. et al. (2010). New Method for fMRI Investigations of Language: Defining ROIs Functionally in Individual Subjects. Journal of Neurophysiology, 104(2), 1177–1194. Lipkin, B. et al. (2022). Probabilistic atlas for the language network based on precision fMRI data from >800 individuals. Scientific Data, 9(1), 529. Mahowald, K., & Fedorenko, E. (2016). Reliable individual-level neural markers of high-level language processing: A necessary precursor for relating neural variability to behavioral and genetic variability. NeuroImage, 139, 74–93.
Topic Areas: Meaning: Lexical Semantics, Disorders: Acquired