Impairments in spoken language are among the most common sequelae of brain damage due to stroke, trauma or neurodegenerative disease. Occasionally, patients with aphasia present with selective difficulties producing words of one grammatical category. Damage to the left prefrontal cortex tends to result in a deficit in verb production; left temporal damage often results in greater difficulty with nouns. However, the nature of these deficits remains controversial: Do they result from problems in representing meaning (semantics), retrieving words (lexical access), or using words in the grammatical context of sentences (morphosyntax)? Are the causes of putative noun-verb differences heterogeneous across patients? I propose to screen aphasic patients for grammatical category specific deficits and to evaluate the potential causes of these deficits using tasks that specifically probe semantic, lexical and morphosyntactic processing, with attention to variations in lesion patterns that may correlate with distinct behavioral deficits. In parallel, I will conduct studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to probe the cortical correlates of noun and verb processing in unimpaired subjects performing similar tasks. ? ?

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)
Type
Individual Predoctoral NRSA for M.D./Ph.D. Fellowships (ADAMHA) (F30)
Project #
5F30NS050906-02
Application #
7013560
Study Section
NST-2 Subcommittee (NST)
Program Officer
Babcock, Debra J
Project Start
2005-01-01
Project End
2008-12-31
Budget Start
2006-01-01
Budget End
2006-12-31
Support Year
2
Fiscal Year
2006
Total Cost
$30,662
Indirect Cost
Name
Harvard University
Department
Psychology
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
082359691
City
Cambridge
State
MA
Country
United States
Zip Code
02138
Cappelletti, Marinella; Fregni, Felipe; Shapiro, Kevin et al. (2008) Processing nouns and verbs in the left frontal cortex: a transcranial magnetic stimulation study. J Cogn Neurosci 20:707-20
Shapiro, Kevin A; Moo, Lauren R; Caramazza, Alfonso (2006) Cortical signatures of noun and verb production. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 103:1644-9