J. Cogn. Neurosci.
HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS
QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced]


     

This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrow reprints & permissions
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Yokoyama, S.
Right arrow Articles by Kawashima, R.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Yokoyama, S.
Right arrow Articles by Kawashima, R.
(Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 2006;18:1304-1313.)
© 2006 The MIT Press

Cortical Mechanisms Involved in the Processing of Verbs: An fMRI Study

Satoru Yokoyama, Tadao Miyamoto, Jorge Riera, Jungho Kim, Yuko Akitsuki, Kazuki Iwata, Kei Yoshimoto, Kaoru Horie, Shigeru Sato and Ryuta Kawashima

Tohoku University, Japan

Reprint requests should be sent to Satoru Yokoyama, Graduate School of International Cultural Studies (GSICS), Tohoku University, Kawauchi, Aoba-ku, Sendai-shi, Miyagi-ken, 980-8576, Japan, or via e-mail: yokoyama-s{at}mail.tains.tohoku.ac.jp.

In this study, we investigated two aspects of verb processing: first, whether verbs are processed differently from nouns; and second, how verbal morphology is processed. For this purpose, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare three types of lexical processing in Japanese: the processing of nouns, unmarked active verbs, and inflected passive verbs. Twenty-eight healthy subjects were shown a lexical item and asked to judge whether the presented item was a legal word. Although all three conditions activated the bilateral inferior frontal, occipital, the left middle, and inferior temporal cortices, we found differences in the degree of activation for each condition. Verbs elicited greater activation in the left middle temporal gyrus than nouns, and inflected verbs showed greater activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus than unmarked verbs. This study demonstrates that although verbs are basically processed in the same cortical network as nouns, nouns and verbs elicit different degrees of activation due to the cognitive demands involved in lexical semantic processing. Furthermore, this study also shows that the left inferior frontal cortex is related to the processing of verbal inflectional morphology.




This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 J. Neurosci.Home page
M. Bedny, A. Caramazza, E. Grossman, A. Pascual-Leone, and R. Saxe
Concepts Are More than Percepts: The Case of Action Verbs
J. Neurosci., October 29, 2008; 28(44): 11347 - 11353.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Home page
 JSLHRHome page
C. Weber-Fox and A. Hampton
Stuttering and Natural Speech Processing of Semantic and Syntactic Constraints on Verbs
J Speech Lang Hear Res, October 1, 2008; 51(5): 1058 - 1071.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Home page
 J. Cogn. Neurosci.Home page
C. K. Thompson, B. Bonakdarpour, S. C. Fix, H. K. Blumenfeld, T. B. Parrish, D. R. Gitelman, and M.-M. Mesulam
Neural correlates of verb argument structure processing.
J. Cogn. Neurosci., November 1, 2007; 19(11): 1753 - 1767.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS
NEURAL COMPUTATION J COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE MIT PRESS JOURNALS
Copyright © 2006 by The MIT Press.