Semantic Decision (Animals)/Tone Decision (SDTD - Adult Version)

PI Name: Jerzy Szaflarski, MD, PhD szaflaj@ucmail.uc.edu

Areas: Prefrontal cortex of the inferior, middle, and superior frontal gyri, Posterior cingulated gyrus and retrosplenial cortex, anterior/superior temporal sulcus and middle temporal gyrus, posterior/inferior temporal gyrus, fusiform and anterior parahippocampal gyri, anterior hippocampus, angular gyrus and posterior cerebellum

Program: DirectRT

Durations: 7 min. 15 sec.

Special Equipment: Headphones, Hand button press

Description: This language fMRI paradigm consists of two intervening (block design) conditions: the control condition (tone recognition, performed 8 times) and the active condition (semantic recognition, performed 7 times). Presentation of each condition lasted 30 seconds (15 seconds for the first tone recognition) with stimuli presented every 3.75 seconds. In the tone condition, subjects heard 8 brief sequences of four to seven 500 Hz and 750 Hz tones. They responded with a non-dominant hand button press for any sequence containing either two 750 Hz tones ("1") or different than two 750 Hz tones ("2"). In the active condition, subjects heard 8 spoken English nouns designating animals and responded "1" with a non-dominant hand button press to stimuli that met two criteria: "native to the United States" and "commonly used by humans." In all other cases they responded with button press "2."