RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Oscillatory Neuronal Activity Reflects Lexical-Semantic Feature Integration within and across Sensory Modalities in Distributed Cortical Networks
JF The Journal of Neuroscience
JO J. Neurosci.
FD Society for Neuroscience
SP 14318
OP 14323
DO 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0958-14.2014
VO 34
IS 43
A1 van Ackeren, Markus J.
A1 Schneider, Till R.
A1 Müsch, Kathrin
A1 Rueschemeyer, Shirley-Ann
YR 2014
UL http://www.jneurosci.org/content/34/43/14318.abstract
AB Research from the previous decade suggests that word meaning is partially stored in distributed modality-specific cortical networks. However, little is known about the mechanisms by which semantic content from multiple modalities is integrated into a coherent multisensory representation. Therefore we aimed to characterize differences between integration of lexical-semantic information from a single modality compared with two sensory modalities. We used magnetoencephalography in humans to investigate changes in oscillatory neuronal activity while participants verified two features for a given target word (e.g., “bus”). Feature pairs consisted of either two features from the same modality (visual: “red,” “big”) or different modalities (auditory and visual: “red,” “loud”). The results suggest that integrating modality-specific features of the target word is associated with enhanced high-frequency power (80–120 Hz), while integrating features from different modalities is associated with a sustained increase in low-frequency power (2–8 Hz). Source reconstruction revealed a peak in the anterior temporal lobe for low-frequency and high-frequency effects. These results suggest that integrating lexical-semantic knowledge at different cortical scales is reflected in frequency-specific oscillatory neuronal activity in unisensory and multisensory association networks.