Document Type
Article
Abstract
Syntactic processing and verbal working memory are both essential components to sentence comprehension. Nonetheless, the separability of these systems in the brain remains unclear. To address this issue, we performed causal-inference analyses based on lesion and connectome network mapping using MRI and behavioural testing in two groups of individuals with chronic post-stroke aphasia. We employed a rhyme judgement task with heavy working memory load without articulatory confounds, controlling for the overall ability to match auditory words to pictures and to perform a metalinguistic rhyme judgement, isolating the effect of working memory load (103 individuals). We assessed non-canonical sentence comprehension, isolating syntactic processing by incorporating residual rhyme judgement performance as a covariate for working memory load (78 individuals). Voxel-based lesion analyses and structural connectome-based lesion symptom mapping controlling for total lesion volume were performed, with permutation testing to correct for multiple comparisons (4000 permutations). We observed that effects of working memory load localized to dorsal stream damage: posterior temporal-parietal lesions and frontal-parietal white matter disconnections. These effects were differentiated from syntactic comprehension deficits, which were primarily associated with ventral stream damage: lesions to temporal lobe and temporal-parietal white matter disconnections, particularly when incorporating the residual measure of working memory load as a covariate. Our results support the conclusion that working memory and syntactic processing are associated with distinct brain networks, largely loading onto dorsal and ventral streams, respectively.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Publication Info
Published in Brain Communications, Volume 6, Issue 6, 2024, pages fcae449-.
Rights
© 2024, © The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC BY license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
APA Citation
Matchin, W., Mollasaraei, Z. K., Bonilha, L., Rorden, C., Hickok, G., den Ouden, D., & Fridriksson, J. (2024). Verbal working memory and syntactic comprehension segregate into the dorsal and ventral streams, respectively. Brain Communications, 6(6).https://doi.org/10.1093/braincomms/fcae449