All Talk and No Action: A Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study of Motor Cortex Activation During Action Word Production
View/ Open
Author
Oliveri, Massimiliano
Finocchiaro, Chiara
Gangitano, Massimo
Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1162/089892904322926719Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Oliveri, Massimiliano, Chiara Finocchiaro, Kevin Shapiro, Massimo Gangitano, Alfonso Caramazza, and Alvaro Pascual-Leone. 2004. All talk and no action: A transcranial magnetic stimulation study of motor cortex activation during action word production. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 16(3): 374-381.Abstract
A number of researchers have proposed that the premotor and motor areas are critical for the representation of words that refer to actions, but not objects. Recent evidence against this hypothesis indicates that the left premotor cortex is more sensitive to grammatical differences than to conceptual differences between words. However, it may still be the case that other anterior motor regions are engaged in processing a word's sensorimotor features. In the present study, we used singleand paired-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation to test the hypothesis that left primary motor cortex is activated during the retrieval of words (nouns and verbs) associated with specific actions. We found that activation in the motor cortex increased for action words compared with non-action words, but was not sensitive to the grammatical category of the word being produced. These results complement previous findings and support the notion that producing a word activates some brain regions relevant to the sensorimotor properties associated with that word regardless of its grammatical category.Terms of Use
This article is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of-use#LAACitable link to this page
http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:4710685
Collections
- FAS Scholarly Articles [18256]
Contact administrator regarding this item (to report mistakes or request changes)