Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Modulation of the motor system during visual and auditory language processing

  • Research Article
  • Published:
Experimental Brain Research Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Studies of embodied cognition have demonstrated the engagement of the motor system when people process action-related words and concepts. However, research using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to examine linguistic modulation in primary motor cortex has produced inconsistent results. Some studies report that action words produce an increase in corticospinal excitability; others, a decrease. Given the differences in methodology and modality, we re-examined this issue, comparing conditions in which participants either read or listened to the same set of action words. In separate blocks of trials, participants were presented with lists of words in the visual and auditory modality, and a TMS pulse was applied over left motor cortex, either 150 or 300 ms after the word onset. Motor evoked potentials (MEPs) elicited were larger following the presentation of action words compared with control words. However, this effect was only observed when the words were presented visually; no changes in MEPs were found when the words were presented auditorily. A review of the TMS literature on action word processing reveals a similar modality effect on corticospinal excitability. We discuss different hypotheses that might account for this differential modulation of action semantics by vision and audition.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Pulvermuller et al. (2005) applied single-pulse TMS to motor cortex while participants performed a lexical decision task. RTs were influenced in an effector-specific manner. For example, the time to judge that "kick" was a word was faster following TMS directed at the foot area of motor cortex. The authors interpreted this result as indicating that the TMS primed neural activity in the foot area and facilitated the access of an embodied representation. However, the results are also consistent with the hypothesis that the TMS disrupted activity in effector-specific areas that are potential sources of interference for reading comprehension, consistent with the work of Buccino et al. (2005).

References

  • Aziz-Zadeh L, Maeda F, Zaidel E, Mazziotta J, Iacoboni M (2002) Lateralization in motor facilitation during action observation: a TMS study. Exp Brain Res 144(1):127–131

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Aziz-Zadeh L, Wilson SM, Rizzolatti G, Iacoboni M (2006) Congruent embodied representations for visually presented actions and linguistic phrases describing actions. Curr Biol 16(18):1818–1823

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Boulenger V, Hauk O, Pulvermuller F (2009) Grasping ideas with the motor system: semantic somatotopy in idiom comprehension. Cereb Cortex 19(8):1905–1914

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Buccino G, Binkofski F, Riggio L (2004) The mirror neuron system and action recognition. Brain Lang 89(2):370–376

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Buccino G, Riggio L, Melli G, Binkofski F, Gallese V, Rizzolatti G (2005) Listening to action-related sentences modulates the activity of the motor system: a combined TMS and behavioral study. Brain Res 24(3):355–363

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Fadiga L, Fogassi L, Pavesi G, Rizzolatti G (1995) Motor facilitation during action observation: a magnetic stimulation study. J Neurophysiol 73(6):2608–2611

    PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Fadiga L, Craighero L, Olivier E (2005) Human motor cortex excitability during the perception of others’ action. Curr Opin Neurobiol 15(2):213–218

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Feldman J (2006) From molecule to metaphor. A neural theory of language. The MITT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Feldman J, Narayanan S (2004) Embodied meaning in a neural theory of language. Brain Lang 89(2):385–392

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Fourkas AD, Avenanti A, Urgesi C, Aglioti SM (2006) Corticospinal facilitation during first and third person imagery. Exp Brain Res 168(1–2):143–151

    Google Scholar 

  • Gangitano M, Mottaghy FM, Pascual-Leone A (2001) Phase-specific modulation of cortical motor output during movement observation. Neuroreport 12(7):1489–1492

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Gazzola V, Keysers C (2009) The observation and execution of actions share motor and somatosensory voxels in all tested subjects: single-subject analyses of unsmoothed fMRI data. Cereb Cortex 19(6):1239–1255

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gazzola V, Aziz-Zadeh L, Keysers C (2006) Empathy and the somatotopic auditory mirror system in humans. Curr Biol 16(18):1824–1829

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Glenberg AM, Kaschak MP (2002) Grounding language in action. Psychon Bull Rev 9(3):558–565

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Glenberg AM, Sato M, Cattaneo L, Riggio L, Palumbo D, Buccino G (2008) Processing abstract language modulates motor system activity. Q J Exp Psychol 61(6):905–919

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hauk O, Johnsrude I, Pulvermuller F (2004) Somatotopic representation of action words in human motor and premotor cortex. Neuron 41(2):301–307

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Hauk O, Shtyrov Y, Pulvermuller F (2008) The time course of action and action-word comprehension in the human brain as revealed by neurophysiology. J Physiol, Paris 102(1–3):50–58

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Kohler E, Keysers C, Umilta MA, Fogassi L, Gallese V, Rizzolatti G (2002) Hearing sounds, understanding actions: action representation in mirror neurons. Science (New York, NY) 297(5582):846–848

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Labruna L, Fernández-del-Olmo M, Ivry RB Comparison of different baseline conditions in evaluating factors that influence motor cortex excitability. Brain Stimul (in press)

  • Lahav A, Saltzman E, Schlaug G (2007) Action representation of sound: audiomotor recognition network while listening to newly acquired actions. J Neurosci 27(2):308–314

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Liberman AM, Mattingly IG (1989) A specialization for speech perception. Science (New York, NY) 243(4890):489–494

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Mahon BZ, Caramazza A (2008) A critical look at the embodied cognition hypothesis and a new proposal for grounding conceptual content. J Physiol, Paris 102(1–3):59–70

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morin O, Grezes J (2008) What is “mirror” in the premotor cortex? A review. Neurophysiol Clin 38(3):189–195

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Oldfield RC (1971) The assessment and analysis of handedness: the Edinburgh inventory. Neuropsychologia 9(1):97–113

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Oliveri M, Finocchiaro C, Shapiro K, Gangitano M, Caramazza A, Pascual-Leone A (2004) All talk and no action: a transcranial magnetic stimulation study of motor cortex activation during action word production. J Cogn Neurosci 16(3):374–381

    Google Scholar 

  • Papeo L, Vallesi A, Isaja A, Rumiati RI (2009) Effects of TMS on different stages of motor and non-motor verb processing in the primary motor cortex. PloS One 4(2):e4508

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Patuzzo S, Fiaschi A, Manganotti P (2003) Modulation of motor cortex excitability in the left hemisphere during action observation: a single- and paired-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation study of self- and non-self-action observation. Neuropsychologia 41(9):1272–1278

    Google Scholar 

  • Pizzamiglio L, Aprile T, Spitoni G, Pitzalis S, Bates E, D’Amico S et al (2005) Separate neural systems for processing action- or non-action-related sounds. NeuroImage 24(3):852–861

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Pulvermuller F, Fadiga L (2010) Active perception: sensorimotor circuits as a cortical basis for language. Nat rev 11(5):351–360

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pulvermuller F, Hauk O, Nikulin VV, Ilmoniemi RJ (2005) Functional links between motor and language systems. Eur J Neurosci 21(3):793–797

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Recanzone GH (2009) Interactions of auditory and visual stimuli in space and time. Hear Res 258(1–2):89–99

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rizzolatti G, Craighero L (2004) The mirror-neuron system. Annu Rev Neurosci 27:169–192

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Shtyrov Y, Kujala T, Pulvermuller F (2010) Interactions between language and attention systems: early automatic lexical processing? J Cogn Neurosci 22(7):1465–1478

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Strafella AP, Paus T (2000) Modulation of cortical excitability during action observation: a transcranial magnetic stimulation study. Neuroreport 11(10):2289–2292

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Tettamanti M, Buccino G, Saccuman MC, Gallese V, Danna M, Scifo P et al (2005) Listening to action-related sentences activates fronto-parietal motor circuits. J Cogn Neurosci 17(2):273–281

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Tomasino B, Fink GR, Sparing R, Dafotakis M, Weiss PH (2008) Action verbs and the primary motor cortex: a comparative TMS study of silent reading, frequency judgments, and motor imagery. Neuropsychologia 46(7):1915–1926

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a grant from the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF007350) and a grant from Xunta de Galicia, Spain (PGIDIT06PXIB160333PR).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Health Science Department, University of Molise, Molise, Italy

    Ludovica Labruna

  2. Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Ludovica Labruna, Ayelet Landau & Richard B. Ivry

  3. Departamento de Educación Física e Deportiva, Facultade de Ciencias do Deporte e a Educación Física, INEF, Galicia, Spain

    Miguel Fernández-del-Olmo

  4. Institute of Neuroscience, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

    Julie Duqué

Authors
  1. Ludovica Labruna
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Miguel Fernández-del-Olmo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Ayelet Landau
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Julie Duqué
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Richard B. Ivry
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ludovica Labruna.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Labruna, L., Fernández-del-Olmo, M., Landau, A. et al. Modulation of the motor system during visual and auditory language processing. Exp Brain Res 211, 243–250 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-011-2678-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-011-2678-z

Keywords

Search

Navigation