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. 2006 Dec;99(3):226-35.
doi: 10.1016/j.bandl.2005.07.004. Epub 2005 Aug 10.

Differential prefrontal-temporal neural correlates of semantic processing in children

Henrike K Blumenfeld  1 , James R Booth, Douglas D Burman
Affiliations

Differential prefrontal-temporal neural correlates of semantic processing in children

Henrike K Blumenfeld et al. Brain Lang. 2006 Dec.

Abstract

This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine brain-behavior correlations in a group of 16 children (9- to 12-year-olds). Activation was measured during a semantic judgment task presented in either the visual or auditory modality that required the individual to determine whether a final word was related in meaning to one of two previous words (e.g., found-tank-lost). The main finding was that higher performers (i.e., accuracy) were associated with more activation in posterior representational systems including the inferior and middle temporal gyri, whereas lower performers were associated with more activation in anterior regions including the inferior and middle frontal gyri. This pattern of results was interpreted as reflecting an elaborated semantic representational system in temporal areas for the high accuracy performers that allowed them to efficiently and accurately make meaning based judgments. The low accuracy performers may have an inaccurate or weakly interconnected semantic system that results in greater use of frontal areas in a feature selection process.

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Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1
Neural activation associated with higher-accuracy performance on auditory (red) and visual (green) versions of the semantic judgment task. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this paper.)
Fig 2
Fig 2
Neural activation associated with lower-accuracy performance on auditory (red) and visual (green) versions of the semantic judgment task. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this paper.)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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