Abstract:
The ability to accurately name an object requires the ability to precisely map a concept to a lexicon and is a fundamental component of human language production. Prior neuroimaging research has shown the involvement of medial temporal and frontal regions in this semantic naming ability, such as when one is presented with a picture that they must verbally identify. However, most methods are unable to show that a brain region is causally involved in a particular behavior, limiting our understanding of this process and lowering the prediction of associated deficits following a neurosurgical resection of brain areas. In our study, we use voxel-lesion symptom mapping (VLSM) in glioma tumor patients to study the causal relationship between the brain structure and semantic naming function by investigating the relationship between lesion status and behavioral measure at each voxel level. In this talk, I’ll discuss (1) how we’ve replicated the findings from stroke VLSM research in identifying regions that are associated with semantic naming deficits in non-vascular lesions, and (2) how the consideration of different histological sub-regions of the tumor can further account for variance in the VLSM models.