2016/09/07 by Joseph C. Griffis, Rodolphe Nenert, Griffis, Joseph C. +5 · 1 citation
Medicine · Neuroscience · #Acute Ischemic Stroke Management #Advanced Neuroimaging Techniques and Applications #Cerebrovascular and Carotid Artery Diseases #FOS: Biological sciences #Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism #Neurons and Cognition (q-bio.NC)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1609.02114
openalex publication_date 2016/09/07 · openalex created_date 2022/10/04 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Damage to the white matter underlying the left posterior temporal lobe leads\nto deficits in multiple language functions. The posterior temporal white matter\nmay correspond to a bottleneck where both dorsal and ventral language pathways\nare vulnerable to simultaneous damage. Damage to a second putative white matter\nbottleneck in the left deep prefrontal white matter involving projections\nassociated with ventral language pathways and thalamo-cortical projections has\nrecently been proposed as a source of semantic deficits after stroke. However,\nthe effects of damage to a priori identified white matter bottlenecks on\nlanguage function have not been directly investigated. Here, we first used\nwhite matter atlases to identify the previously described white matter\nbottlenecks in the posterior temporal and deep prefrontal white matter. We then\nassessed the effects of damage to each region on measures of category fluency,\npicture naming, and auditory semantic decision-making in 43 patients with\nchronic aphasia. Damage to the posterior temporal bottleneck predicted deficits\non all language measures, while damage to the anterior bottleneck only\npredicted deficits in category fluency. Importantly, the effects of damage to\nthe bottleneck regions were not attributable to lesion volume, lesion loads on\nthe tracts traversing the bottlenecks, or damage to nearby cortical language\nareas. Multivariate lesion-symptom mapping and fiber tracking analyses\ncorroborated these findings. Together, our results provide strong support for\nthe proposal that spatially specific white matter damage affecting white matter\nbottlenecks, particularly in the posterior temporal lobe, contribute to chronic\nlanguage deficits after left hemispheric stroke. Our results suggest that\ndamage to this area is likely to simultaneously disrupt signaling via the\nsimultaneous disruption of dorsal and ventral language processing streams.\n