Multimodal study of multilevel pulvino-temporal connections: a new piece in the puzzle of lexical retrieval networks.

Advanced methods of imaging and mapping the healthy and lesioned brain have allowed for the identification of the cortical nodes and white matter tracts supporting the dual neurofunctional organization of language networks in a dorsal phonological and a ventral semantic stream. Much less understood are the anatomical correlates of the interaction between the two streams; one hypothesis being that of a subcortically mediated interaction, through crossed cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical and cortico-thalamo-cortical loops. In this regard, the pulvinar is the thalamic subdivision that has most regularly appeared as implicated in the processing of lexical retrieval. However, descriptions of its connections with temporal (language) areas remain scarce. Here we assess this pulvino-temporal connectivity using a combination of state-of-the-art techniques: white matter stimulation in awake surgery and postoperative diffusion MRI (n = 4), virtual dissection from the Human Connectome Project 3 and 7 T datasets (n = 172) and operative microscope-assisted post-mortem fibre dissection (n = 12). We demonstrate the presence of four fundamental fibre contingents: (i) the anterior component (Arnold's bundle proper) initially described by Arnold in the 19th century and destined to the anterior temporal lobe; (ii) the optic radiations-like component, which leaves the pulvinar accompanying the optical radiations and reaches the posterior basal temporal cortices; (iii) the lateral component, which crosses the temporal stem orthogonally and reaches the middle temporal gyrus; and (iv) the auditory radiations-like component, which leaves the pulvinar accompanying the auditory radiations to the superomedial aspect of the temporal operculum, just posteriorly to Heschl's gyrus. Each of those components might correspond to a different level of information processing involved in the lexical retrieval process of picture naming.

Neural mechanisms of sentence production: a volumetric study of primary progressive aphasia.

Studies on the neural bases of sentence production have yielded mixed results, partly due to differences in tasks and participant types. In this study, 101 individuals with primary progressive aphasia (PPA) were evaluated using a test that required spoken production following an auditory prime (Northwestern Assessment of Verbs and Sentences-Sentence Production Priming Test, NAVS-SPPT), and one that required building a sentence by ordering word cards (Northwestern Anagram Test, NAT). Voxel-Based Morphometry revealed that gray matter (GM) volume in left inferior/middle frontal gyri (L IFG/MFG) was associated with sentence production accuracy on both tasks, more so for complex sentences, whereas, GM volume in left posterior temporal regions was exclusively associated with NAVS-SPPT performance and predicted by performance on a Digit Span Forward (DSF) task. Verb retrieval deficits partly mediated the relationship between L IFG/MFG and performance on the NAVS-SPPT. These findings underscore the importance of L IFG/MFG for sentence production and suggest that this relationship is partly accounted for by verb retrieval deficits, but not phonological loop integrity. In contrast, it is possible that the posterior temporal cortex is associated with auditory short-term memory ability, to the extent that DSF performance is a valid measure of this in aphasia.

An access deficit or a deficit in the phonological representations themselves: What can we learn from naming errors?

Anomic aphasia is characterized by good comprehension and non-word repetition but poor naming. Two sub-types of deficits might be hypothesized: faulty access to preserved phonological representations or preserved access to impaired representations. Phonological errors may occur only when representations are impaired or in post-lexical deficits (conduction aphasia). We analysed the incidence of phonological naming errors of 30 individuals, 25 with anomic aphasia based on poor naming but good repetition and comprehension, and five with conduction aphasia based on poor naming and poor repetition. Individuals with anomic aphasia produced very few phonological errors compared to individuals with conduction aphasia (0-19.1% versus 42-66%). However, six individuals with anomia produced more than 11% phonological errors, suggesting two patterns of deficit: either impaired lexical representations or impaired access to them. The lack of phonological errors in most individuals with anomic aphasia suggests that access to the phonological output lexicon is semantically, not phonologically driven.

Language in Healthy Ageing: A Comparison across Language Domains.

INTRODUCTION: Life expectancy has been increasing in recent decades. Therefore, it is important to understand the functional changes during healthy ageing. Most research has mainly focused on one linguistic domain at a time. The current study aimed at investigating whether changes in language performance in healthy ageing occur in some language domains more than in others. METHODS: Twenty-three older healthy Hebrew-speaking adults, exhibiting no cognitive decline, were examined on tasks aimed at testing their performance in different language and cognitive domains: lexical retrieval, complementation information, syntax, theory of mind (a domain related to pragmatic aspects of language), and short-term memory. We compared their performance at both the group and the individual levels. Comparisons were made between the performance of the older adults and control data of young adults, and between the older adults' performance in the different linguistic domains. In addition, correlations between the older adults' phonological short-term memory abilities and their performance in various linguistic domains were examined. RESULTS: A decline was found in several linguistic domains among the older adults, while in other domains no decline was found. However, no unequivocal decline in linguistic functioning was found due to relatively large variance in their performance. CONCLUSION: Not all linguistic domains are equally vulnerable in ageing, and not all older adults are equally affected. The research has both clinical and theoretical implications.

Exploring the effects of verb and noun treatment on verb phrase production in primary progressive aphasia: A series of single case experimental design studies.

Evidence of generalization to connected speech following lexical retrieval treatment in Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) is scarce. Consequently, this study systematically investigated changes in verb phrase production following lexical retrieval treatment in a series of single case experimental design studies. Four individuals with PPA (three semantic- and one logopenic variant PPA) who had previously demonstrated that they could integrate verbs and nouns into sentence structures in a cueing paradigm, undertook a sequence of verb and noun lexical retrieval treatments using Repetition and Reading in the Presence of a Picture. Production of treated nouns- and/or verbs-in-isolation significantly improved following treatment for three of the four participants. Verb phrase production did not improve for one of these participants (logopenic PPA), perhaps due to the relatively small treatment dose. Two participants (semantic variant PPA) did, however, demonstrate across-level generalization, with improvement in treated verbs and using those verbs in (untreated) verb phrases. Their verb phrase production improved most after lexical retrieval treatment for both nouns and verbs, suggesting this combined approach may benefit across-level generalization for some individuals in clinical practice.

The effects of multiple linguistic variables on picture naming in American Sign Language.

Picture-naming tasks provide critical data for theories of lexical representation and retrieval and have been performed successfully in sign languages. However, the specific influences of lexical or phonological factors and stimulus properties on sign retrieval are poorly understood. To examine lexical retrieval in American Sign Language (ASL), we conducted a timed picture-naming study using 524 pictures (272 objects and 251 actions). We also compared ASL naming with previous data for spoken English for a subset of 425 pictures. Deaf ASL signers named object pictures faster and more consistently than action pictures, as previously reported for English speakers. Lexical frequency, iconicity, better name agreement, and lower phonological complexity each facilitated naming reaction times (RT)s. RTs were also faster for pictures named with shorter signs (measured by average response duration). Target name agreement was higher for pictures with more iconic and shorter ASL names. The visual complexity of pictures slowed RTs and decreased target name agreement. RTs and target name agreement were correlated for ASL and English, but agreement was lower for ASL, possibly due to the English bias of the pictures. RTs were faster for ASL, which we attributed to a smaller lexicon. Overall, the results suggest that models of lexical retrieval developed for spoken languages can be adopted for signed languages, with the exception that iconicity should be included as a factor. The open-source picture-naming data set for ASL serves as an important, first-of-its-kind resource for researchers, educators, or clinicians for a variety of research, instructional, or assessment purposes.

The lrd package: An R package and Shiny application for processing lexical data.

Recall testing is a common assessment to gauge memory retrieval. Responses from these tests can be analyzed in several ways; however, the output generated from a recall study typically requires manual coding that can be time intensive and error-prone before analyses can be conducted. To address this issue, this article introduces lrd (Lexical Response Data), a set of open-source tools for quickly and accurately processing lexical response data that can be used either from the R command line or through an R Shiny graphical user interface. First, we provide an overview of this package and include a step-by-step user guide for processing both cued- and free-recall responses. For validation of lrd, we used lrd to recode output from cued, free, and sentence-recall studies with large samples and examined whether the results replicated using lrd-scored data. We then assessed the inter-rater reliability and sensitivity and specificity of the scoring algorithm relative to human-coded data. Overall, lrd is highly reliable and shows excellent sensitivity and specificity, indicating that recall data processed using this package are remarkably consistent with data processed by a human coder.

Semantic fluency difficulties in developmental dyslexia and developmental language disorder (DLD): poor semantic structure of the lexicon or slower retrieval processes?

BACKGROUND: Children with dyslexia and/or developmental language disorder (hereafter children with DDLD) have been reported to retrieve fewer words than their typically developing (TD) peers in semantic fluency tasks. It is not known whether this retrieval difficulty can be attributed to the semantic structure of their lexicon being poor or, alternatively, to words being retrieved more slowly despite semantic structure being intact. AIMS: To test two theoretical models that could potentially account for retrieval difficulties in semantic fluency tasks, namely, the Poor Lexical-Semantic Structure Model and the Slow-Retrieval Model. Both models predict that children with DDLD will retrieve fewer items compared with TD children. However, while the Poor Lexical-Semantic Structure Model predicts a less sophisticated network of semantic connections between words in the lexicon, as evidenced by smaller clusters of related items in children with DDLD, the Slow-Retrieval Model predicts intact inter-item associations in the lexicon, as evidenced by the two groups' clusters being of a similar size. The groups' semantic fluency performance was therefore compared. How semantic fluency performance related to children's language, literacy, and phonological skills was also investigated. METHODS & PROCEDURES: A total of 66 children with DDLD aged 7-12 years and 83 TD children aged 6-12 years, all monolingual Greek speakers, were tested on semantic fluency, using the categories 'animals', 'foods' and 'objects from around the house'. The numbers of correct and incorrect responses, clusters and switches, and the average cluster size were computed. Children were also assessed on non-verbal IQ, language, literacy and phonological tasks. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: In both groups, productivity in semantic fluency tasks correlated strongly with the numbers of clusters and switches, but not with average cluster size. The DDLD group produced significantly fewer correct responses and fewer clusters compared with the TD group, but the two groups showed similar switching and average cluster size. Children's language, literacy and phonological skills significantly predicted the number of correct responses produced, beyond the significant effect of age. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: We conclude that poorer semantic fluency performance in children with DDLD results not from a lexicon with poor semantic structure, but rather from slower retrieval processes from a lexicon with intact semantic structure. The underlying causes of slow lexical retrieval still need further investigation.

Treatment for spoken and written word retrieval in the semantic variant of primary progressive aphasia.

This study investigated whether a treatment programme for spoken word retrieval, supplemented with written naming, was beneficial for an individual with right-hemisphere dominant semantic variant of PPA (svPPA). Assessment and treatment were delivered remotely through Skype. Treatment consisted of two phases of lexical retrieval therapy (Repetition and Reading in the Presence of a Picture: RRIPP), with and without written responses (Phases 1 and 2 respectively), and a third treatment phase based on the procedures of Conceptual Enrichment (COEN) therapy. The first two phases of treatment resulted in short-lasting improvements in spoken and written word retrieval, with greater improvement in Phase 2 when written production was also required. Both treatment phases resulted in gains only for treated items, but generalised to different depictions to those treated. However, Phase 2 also resulted in significant improvement of treated items on a comprehension task. COEN treatment did not result in significant gains in word retrieval or comprehension. This study reinforces the value of a simple lexical retrieval treatment delivered remotely. It adds to the current evidence that anomia in svPPA can be responsive to treatment, but also shows that challenges remain regarding maintenance effects and the generalisation of treatment effects to connected speech.

Cognitive style modulates semantic interference effects: evidence from field dependency.

The so-called semantic interference effect is a delay in selecting an appropriate target word in a context where semantic neighbours are strongly activated. Semantic interference effect has been described to vary from one individual to another. These differences in the susceptibility to semantic interference may be due to either differences in the ability to engage in lexical-specific selection mechanisms or to differences in the ability to engage more general, top-down inhibition mechanisms which suppress unwanted responses based on task-demands. However, semantic interference may also be modulated by an individual's disposition to separate relevant perceptual signals from noise, such as a field-independent (FI) or a field-dependent (FD) cognitive style. We investigated the relationship between semantic interference in picture naming and in an STM probe task and both the ability to inhibit responses top-down (measured through a Stroop task) and a FI/FD cognitive style measured through the embedded figures test (EFT). We found a significant relationship between semantic interference in picture naming and cognitive style-with semantic interference increasing as a function of the degree of field dependence-but no associations with the semantic probe and the Stroop task. Our results suggest that semantic interference can be modulated by cognitive style, but not by differences in the ability to engage top-down control mechanisms, at least as measured by the Stroop task.

Comparing the effects of clinician and caregiver-administered lexical retrieval training for progressive anomia.

There is a growing body of literature indicating that lexical retrieval training can result in improved naming ability in individuals with neurodegenerative disease. Traditionally, treatment is administered by a speech-language pathologist, with little involvement of caregivers or carry-over of practice into the home. This study examined the effects of a lexical retrieval training programme that was implemented first by a clinician and, subsequently, by a trained caregiver. Two dyads, each consisting of one individual with anomia caused by neurodegenerative disease (one with mild cognitive impairment and one with logopenic primary progressive aphasia) and their caregiver, participated in the study. Results indicated medium and large effect sizes for both clinician- and caregiver-trained items, with generalisation to untrained stimuli. Participants reported improved confidence during communication as well as increased use of trained communication strategies after treatment. This study is the first to document that caregiver-administered speech and language intervention can have positive outcomes when paired with training by a clinician. Caregiver-administered treatment may be a viable means of increasing treatment dosage in the current climate of restricted reimbursement, particularly for patients with progressive conditions.

Maximising recovery from aphasia with central and peripheral agraphia: The benefit of sequential treatments.

Maximal recovery from acquired language impairment may require progression from one behavioural treatment protocol to the next in order to build upon residual and relearned cognitive-linguistic and sensory-motor processes. We present a five-stage treatment sequence that was initiated at one year post stroke in a woman with acquired impairments of spoken and written language. As is typical of individuals with left perisylvian damage, she demonstrated marked impairment of phonological retrieval and sublexical phonology, but she also faced additional challenges due to impaired letter shape knowledge and visual attention. The treatment sequence included (1) written spelling of targeted words, (2) retraining sublexical sound-to-letter correspondences and phonological manipulation skills, (3) training strategic approaches to maximise interactive use of lexical, phonological, and orthographic knowledge, (4) lexical retrieval of spoken words, and finally (5) sentence-level stimulation to improve grammatical form of written narratives. This Phase II clinical study documented positive direct treatment outcomes along with evidence of a significant reduction in the underlying deficits and generalisation to untrained items and language tasks. Improvements on a comprehensive assessment battery were realised as functional gains in everyday written and spoken communication, including improved lexical retrieval and grammatical complexity of written narratives. This case provides a valuable example of the cumulative therapeutic benefit of sequential application of theoretically motivated treatment protocols.

spreadr: An R package to simulate spreading activation in a network.

The notion of spreading activation is a central theme in the cognitive sciences; however, the tools for implementing spreading activation computationally are not as readily available. This article introduces the spreadr R package, which can implement spreading activation within a specified network structure. The algorithmic method implemented in the spreadr subroutines follows the approach described in Vitevitch, Ercal, and Adagarla (Frontiers in Psychology, 2, 369, 2011), who viewed activation as a fixed cognitive resource that could "spread" among connected nodes in a network. Three sets of simulations were conducted using the package. The first set of simulations successfully reproduced the results reported in Vitevitch et al. (Frontiers in Psychology, 2, 369, 2011), who showed that a simple mechanism of spreading activation could account for the clustering coefficient effect in spoken word recognition. The second set of simulations showed that the same mechanism could be extended to account for higher false alarm rates for low clustering coefficient words in a false memory task. The final set of simulations demonstrated how spreading activation could be applied to a semantic network to account for semantic priming effects. It is hoped that this package will encourage cognitive and language scientists to explicitly consider how the structures of cognitive systems such as the mental lexicon and semantic memory interact with the process of spreading activation.

Variation in language mixing in multilingual aphasia.

Mixing languages within a sentence or a conversation is a common practice among many speakers of multiple languages. Language mixing found in multilingual speakers with aphasia has been suggested to reflect deficits associated with the brain lesion. In this paper, we examine language mixing behaviour in multilingual people with aphasia to test the hypothesis that the use of language mixing reflects a communicative strategy. We analysed connected language production elicited from 11 individuals with aphasia. Words produced were coded as mixed or not. Frequencies of mixing were tabulated for each individual in each of her or his languages in each of two elicitation tasks (Picture sequence description, Narrative production). We tested the predictions that there would be more word mixing: for participants with greater aphasia severity; while speaking in a language of lower post-stroke proficiency; during a task that requires more restricted word retrieval; for people with non-fluent aphasia, while attempting to produce function words (compared to content words); and that there would be little use of a language not known to the interlocutors. The results supported three of the five predictions. We interpret our data to suggest that multilingual speakers with aphasia mix words in connected language production primarily to bypass instances of word-retrieval difficulties, and typically avoid pragmatically inappropriate language mixing.

Breathe Easy, Speak Easy: Pulmonary Function and Language Performance in Aging.

BACKGROUND: This study explored the association between pulmonary function (PF) and older adults' language performance accuracy. Study rationale was anchored in aging research reporting PF as a reliable risk factor affecting cognition among the elderly. METHODS: 180 adult English native speakers aged 55 to 84 years participated in the study. PF was measured through forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1), forced vital capacity (FVC), and FEV1/FVC ratio (FFR). Language performance was assessed with an action naming test and an object naming test, and two tests of sentence comprehension, one manipulating syntactic complexity and the other, semantic negation. Greater PF was predicted to be positively associated with all tasks. RESULTS: Unadjusted models revealed FVC and FEV1 effects on language performance among older adults. Participants with higher FVC showed better naming on both tasks and those with higher FEV1 had better object naming only. In covariate-adjusted models, only a positive FVC-object naming association remained. CONCLUSION: Findings were discussed in terms of brain oxygenation mechanisms, whereby good PF may implicate efficient oxygenation, supporting neurotransmitter metabolism that protects against neural effects of cerebrovascular risk. Effects on object naming were linked to putative differential oxygenation demands across language tasks.

Writing fluency in patients with low-grade glioma before and after surgery.

BACKGROUND: Low-grade glioma (LGG) is a type of brain tumour often situated in or near areas involved in language, sensory or motor functions. Depending on localization and tumour characteristics, language or cognitive impairments due to tumour growth and/or surgical resection are obvious risks. One task that may be at risk is writing, both because it requires intact language and memory function and because it is a very complex and cognitively demanding task. The most commonly reported language deficit in LGG patients is oral lexical-retrieval difficulties, and poor lexical retrieval would be expected to affect writing fluency. AIMS: To explore whether writing fluency is affected in LGG patients before and after surgery and whether it is related to performance on tasks of oral lexical retrieval. METHODS & PROCEDURES: Twenty consecutive patients with presumed LGG wrote a narrative and performed a copy task before undergoing surgery and at 3-month follow-up using keystroke-logging software. The same tasks were performed by a reference group (N = 31). The patients were also tested using the Boston Naming Test (BNT) and word-fluency tests before and after surgery. Writing fluency was compared between the patients and the reference group, and between the patients before and after surgery. Relationships between performance on tests of oral lexical retrieval and writing fluency were investigated both before and after surgery. OUTCOME & RESULTS: Different aspects of writing fluency were affected in the LGG patients both before and after surgery. However, when controlling for the effect of typing speed, the LGG group differed significantly from the reference group only in the proportion of pauses within words. After surgery, a significant decline was seen in production rate and typing speed in the narrative task, and a significant increase was seen in pauses before words. Strong positive relationships were found between oral lexical retrieval and writing fluency both before and after surgery. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: Although aspects of writing fluency were affected both before and after surgery, the results indicate that typing speed is an important factor behind the pre-surgery differences. However, the decline in overall productivity and the increase in pauses before words after surgery could be related to a lexical deficit. This is supported by the finding that oral lexical-retrieval scores were strongly correlated with writing fluency. However, further exploration is needed to identify the language and cognitive abilities affecting writing processes in LGG patients.

What we can learn from naming errors of children with language impairment at preschool age.

Naming is a complex, multi-level process. It is composed of distinct semantic and phonological levels. Children with naming deficits produce different error types when failing to retrieve the target word. This study explored the error characteristics of children with language impairment compared to those with typical language development. 46 preschool children were tested on a naming test: 16 with language impairment and a naming deficit and 30 with typical language development. The analysis compared types of error in both groups. In a group level, children with language impairment produced different error patterns compared to the control group. Based on naming error analysis and performance on other language tests, two case studies of contrasting profiles suggest different sources for lexical retrieval difficulties in children. The findings reveal differences between the two groups in naming scores and naming errors, and support a qualitative impairment in early development of children with naming deficits. The differing profiles of naming deficits emphasise the importance of including error analysis in the diagnosis.

Neural activity during sentence processing as reflected in theta, alpha, beta, and gamma oscillations.

We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to explore the spatiotemporal dynamics of neural oscillations associated with sentence processing in 102 participants. We quantified changes in oscillatory power as the sentence unfolded, and in response to individual words in the sentence. For words early in a sentence compared to those late in the same sentence, we observed differences in left temporal and frontal areas, and bilateral frontal and right parietal regions for the theta, alpha, and beta frequency bands. The neural response to words in a sentence differed from the response to words in scrambled sentences in left-lateralized theta, alpha, beta, and gamma. The theta band effects suggest that a sentential context facilitates lexical retrieval, and that this facilitation is stronger for words late in the sentence. Effects in the alpha and beta bands may reflect the unification of semantic and syntactic information, and are suggestive of easier unification late in a sentence. The gamma oscillations are indicative of predicting the upcoming word during sentence processing. In conclusion, changes in oscillatory neuronal activity capture aspects of sentence processing. Our results support earlier claims that language (sentence) processing recruits areas distributed across both hemispheres, and extends beyond the classical language regions.

Increased subcortical neural activity among HIV+ individuals during a lexical retrieval task.

BACKGROUND: Deficits in lexical retrieval, present in approximately 40% of HIV+ patients, are thought to reflect disruptions to frontal-striatal functions and may worsen with immunosuppression. Coupling frontal-striatal tasks such as lexical retrieval with functional neuroimaging may help delineate the pathophysiologic mechanisms underlying HIV-associated neurological dysfunction. OBJECTIVE: We examined whether HIV infection confers brain functional changes during lexical access and retrieval. It was expected that HIV+ individuals would demonstrate greater brain activity in frontal-subcortical regions despite minimal differences between groups on neuropsychological testing. Within the HIV+ sample, we examined associations between indices of immunosuppression (recent and nadir CD4+ count) and task-related signal change in frontostriatal structures. Method16 HIV+ participants and 12 HIV- controls underwent fMRI while engaged in phonemic/letter and semantic fluency tasks. Participants also completed standardized measures of verbal fluency RESULTS: HIV status groups performed similarly on phonemic and semantic fluency tasks prior to being scanned. fMRI results demonstrated activation differences during the phonemic fluency task as a function of HIV status, with HIV+ individuals demonstrating significantly greater activation in BG structures than HIV- individuals. There were no significant differences in frontal brain activation between HIV status groups during the phonemic fluency task, nor were there significant brain activation differences during the semantic fluency task. Within the HIV+ group, current CD4+ count, though not nadir, was positively correlated with increased activity in the inferior frontal gyrus and basal ganglia. CONCLUSION: During phonemic fluency performance, HIV+ patients recruit subcortical structures to a greater degree than HIV- controls despite similar task performances suggesting that fMRI may be sensitive to neurocompromise before overt cognitive declines can be detected. Among HIV+ individuals, reduced activity in the frontal-subcortical structures was associated with lower CD4+ count.

Beta oscillations reflect memory and motor aspects of spoken word production.

Two major components form the basis of spoken word production: the access of conceptual and lexical/phonological information in long-term memory, and motor preparation and execution of an articulatory program. Whereas the motor aspects of word production have been well characterized as reflected in alpha-beta desynchronization, the memory aspects have remained poorly understood. Using magnetoencephalography, we investigated the neurophysiological signature of not only motor but also memory aspects of spoken-word production. Participants named or judged pictures after reading sentences. To probe the involvement of the memory component, we manipulated sentence context. Sentence contexts were either constraining or nonconstraining toward the final word, presented as a picture. In the judgment task, participants indicated with a left-hand button press whether the picture was expected given the sentence. In the naming task, they named the picture. Naming and judgment were faster with constraining than nonconstraining contexts. Alpha-beta desynchronization was found for constraining relative to nonconstraining contexts pre-picture presentation. For the judgment task, beta desynchronization was observed in left posterior brain areas associated with conceptual processing and in right motor cortex. For the naming task, in addition to the same left posterior brain areas, beta desynchronization was found in left anterior and posterior temporal cortex (associated with memory aspects), left inferior frontal cortex, and bilateral ventral premotor cortex (associated with motor aspects). These results suggest that memory and motor components of spoken word production are reflected in overlapping brain oscillations in the beta band.