Learning new names for new objects: Cortical effects as measured by magnetoencephalography

Katri Cornelissen, Matti Laine*, Kati Renvall, Timo Saarinen, Nadine Martin, Riitta Salmelin

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

85 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We tracked the evolvement of naming-related cortical dynamics with magnetoencephalography when five normal adults successfully learned names and/or meanings of unfamiliar objects. In all subjects, the learning of new names was associated with pronounced cortical effects. The learning effect was of long latency and emerged as a change of activation in the same cortical network that was active during naming of familiar items. In four out of five subjects, the cortical learning effect occurred in the inferior parietal lobe. In three of these subjects, the cortical effect was left-sided. These results suggest that the inferior parietal lobe plays an important role in the acquisition of novel words, presumably as a part of working memory systems.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)617-622
Number of pages6
JournalBrain and Language
Volume89
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jun 2004
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Cortical plasticity
  • Inferior parietal lobe
  • Lexical acquisition
  • MEG
  • Picture naming

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