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Updated: May 12, 2026

Correlating Behavioral Responses to fMRI Signals from Human Prefrontal Cortex: Examining Cognitive Processes Using Task Analysis
Published on: June 20, 2012
Analysis of abstract and concrete word processing in persons with aphasia and age-matched neurologically healthy
Chaleece Sandberg1, Swathi Kiran
1a Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences , Boston University , Boston , MA , USA.
Abstract:
The concreteness effect occurs in both normal and language-disordered populations. Research suggests that abstract and concrete concepts elicit differing neural activation patterns in healthy young adults, but this is undocumented in persons with aphasia (PWA). Three PWA and three age-matched controls were scanned using fMRI while processing abstract and concrete words. Consistent with current theories of abstract and concrete word processing, abstract words elicited activation in verbal areas, whereas concrete words additionally activated multimodal association areas. PWA show greater differences in neural activation than age-matched controls between abstract and concrete words, possibly due to an exaggerated concreteness effect.

