Disruption of the language production network following anterior temporal lobe resection

Event Abstract Back to Event Disruption of the language production network following anterior temporal lobe resection Simon Fischer-Baum1*, Curtiss Chapman1, Patrick Rollo2, Kathryn Tombridge2, Joshua Breier2 and Nitin Tandon2 1 Rice University, United States 2 University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, United States The function of the left anterior temporal lobe (ATL) in language production is not well understood. It has been argued to contain semantic representations necessary for word retrieval, as damage results in semantic errors (Schwartz et al., 2009). However, naming-related activity is rarely observed in neuroimaging (Forseth et al., 2018). Why is damage to the left ATL linked to semantic impairments in naming if it shows no activation? One possibility is that it is not critical to language production, but patients with ATL damage also have damage to adjacent regions critical for semantics. Alternatively, the neural code in the ATL may be sparse and difficult to detect with neuroimaging. To investigate these possibilities, we studied individuals with left ATL resections and naming fMRI pre- and post-surgery. Eighty-six patients who had surgery in either the left and right hemispheres, and either resections of the ATL or ablation of tissue circumscribed to the MTL were given pre- and post-surgery neuropsychological testing. Surgery location influenced the pre- to post-test change in the Boston Naming test (F(1,82) = 4.05, p < .05), with only left ATL resection patients declining in naming, consistent with previous studies. For eighteen left ATL resection patients, structural and function MRI data were collected before and after surgery with a mix of naming tasks –object and action naming and auditory naming-to-definition. Given the small sample and multiple tasks for each participant, our analysis focused regions that showed consistent declines across all naming tasks following resection. A cluster in the left middle frontal gyrus was identified that decreased in naming related activity pre- to post-surgery (Figure 1). Pre-surgically and in a control population, this region was activated during all naming tasks, and has been linked to phonological and/or articulatory aspects of spoken production. Connectivity analyses show this region is functionally connected to a seed region in the ventral ATL (Jackson et al., 2016). No other cortical region showed decreased activation in all three tasks. Structural MRI data showed that damage was limited to the left ATL, ruling out the possibility that the naming deficit was due to damage to regions adjacent to the ATL. Taken together, these results indicate that damage to the ATL disrupts the wider language production network, particularly at a stage immediately preceding phonological or articulatory processing in language production. We conclude that this the region plays a critical role in language production, despite showing no activation in neuroimaging studies. Figure 1 References Forseth, K. J., Kadipasaoglu, C. M., Conner, C. R., Hickok, G., Knight, R. T., & Tandon, N. (2018). A lexical semantic hub for heteromodal naming in middle fusiform gyrus. Brain, 141(7), 2112-2126. Jackson, R. L., Hoffman, P., Pobric, G., & Ralph, M. A. L. (2016). The semantic network at work and rest: Differential connectivity of anterior temporal lobe subregions. Journal of Neuroscience, 36(5), 1490-1501. Schwartz, M.F., Kimberg, D.Y., Walker, G.M., Faseyitan, O., Brecher, A., Dell, G.S. & Coslett, H.B. (2009). Anterior temporal involvement in semantic word retrieval: voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping evidence from aphasia. Brain, 132(12), 3411-3427. Keywords: Language production, semantics, fMRI, resection, Anterior temporal lobe (ATL) Conference: Academy of Aphasia 57th Annual Meeting, Macau, Macao, SAR China, 27 Oct - 29 Oct, 2019. Presentation Type: Platform presentation Topic: Not eligible for student award Citation: Fischer-Baum S, Chapman C, Rollo P, Tombridge K, Breier J and Tandon N (2019). Disruption of the language production network following anterior temporal lobe resection. Front. Hum. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: Academy of Aphasia 57th Annual Meeting. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2019.01.00082 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 04 May 2019; Published Online: 09 Oct 2019. * Correspondence: Dr. Simon Fischer-Baum, Rice University, Houston, Illinois, United States, simon.j.fischer-baum@rice.edu Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. 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