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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 29, 2026

Lexical Decision Task for Studying Written Word Recognition in Adults with and without Dementia or Mild Cognitive Impairment

Lexical Decision Task for Studying Written Word Recognition in Adults with and without Dementia or Mild Cognitive Impairment

Published on: June 25, 2019

A new lexical card-sorting task for studying fronto-striatal contribution to processing language rules.

F Simard¹, L Monetta, A Nagano-Saito

¹Functional Neuroimaging Unit, Institut Universitaire de Gériatrie de Montréal, Canada.

Brain and Language

|September 20, 2011

Summary

This study reveals distinct brain pathways for semantic and phonological language processing. Fronto-striatal regions show specific activations, supporting separate semantic and phonological language streams in the brain.

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Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) of Wernicke's and Broca's Areas in Studies of Language Learning and Word Acquisition

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) of Wernicke's and Broca's Areas in Studies of Language Learning and Word Acquisition

Published on: July 13, 2019

Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Cognitive Science
Psycholinguistics

Background:

The precise roles of fronto-striatal regions in processing diverse language rules (semantic, phonological) remain debated.
A novel lexical Wisconsin card sorting task analog was developed, replacing visual rules with semantic, rhyme, and syllable onset rules.

Purpose of the Study:

To compare fronto-striatal brain activations associated with different lexical rules (semantic vs. phonological).
To investigate the neural underpinnings of set-shifting abilities within a language context.

Main Methods:

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was employed.
Fourteen healthy, native French-speaking participants performed a lexical analog of the Wisconsin card sorting task.
Activations were analyzed for semantic, rhyme, and syllable onset rule-based word matching.

Main Results:

Semantic rule processing significantly activated the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, fusiform gyrus, ventral temporal lobe, and caudate nucleus.
Phonological rule processing (rhyme, syllable onset) significantly activated posterior Broca's area (area 44), temporoparietal junction, and motor cortical regions.
Findings indicate differential involvement of brain regions within the language network for semantic and phonological tasks.

Conclusions:

The results support the existence of distinct ventral semantic and dorsal phonological processing pathways in the brain.
The involvement of ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and caudate nucleus in semantic tasks may reflect general rule retrieval from memory, analogous to non-lexical set-shifting.