Covert Verb Generation

PI Name: Scott K Holland,PhD

Email: Scott.Holland@cchmc.org

Areas: Inf. Fr. Gy, Sup.Temp.Gy, Temp. Par Jn, Par, Occ, Temp

Program: Mac Stim or CD

Durations: 5 min. 30 sec

Special Equipment: Headphones, or Visual presentation system

Description: A block periodic sequence of 30 seconds intervals of stimulation and control tasks. During the stimulation phase, the subject is presented aurally with a series of concrete nouns at 5 seconds intervals. Subjects respond to each noun by covertly producing as many verbs associated with the noun as possible before the next noun is presented. Because this task is performed covertly, performance need not be monitored explicitly. As a surrogate measure of performance subjects are given a quiz following the scan to identify nouns that were presented during the task along with additional nouns matched for first letter, number of syllables, and word frequency. The control phase for this paradigm involves 30 seconds of bilateral, sequential finger tapping, paced externally by a tone presented at 5 second intervals (FM tones centered on 400 Hz with 25% modulation). This is designed to control for the auditory prompt used in the verb generation task, to distract subject from unintentional, continued engagement in the verb generation task during rest interval, and to provide activation of motor strip as reference data for each subject.