Effects of TMS on different stages of motor and non-motor verb processing in the primary motor cortex.

ABSTRACT: The embodied cognition hypothesis suggests that motor and premotor areas are automatically and necessarily involved in understanding action language, as word conceptual representations are embodied. This transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) study explores the role of the left primary motor cortex in action-verb processing. TMS-induced motor-evoked potentials from right-hand muscles were recorded as a measure of M1 activity, while participants were asked either to judge explicitly whether a verb was action-related (semantic task) or to decide on the number of syllables in a verb (syllabic task). TMS was applied in three different experiments at 170, 350 and 500 ms post-stimulus during both tasks to identify when the enhancement of M1 activity occurred during word processing. The delays b

SUBMITTER: Papeo L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2643000 | biostudies-literature | 2009

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature