Representation of semantic typicality in brain activation in healthy adults and individuals with aphasia: a multi-voxel pattern analysis

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate brain regions that show different activation patterns between semantically typical and atypical items in both healthy adults and individuals with aphasia (PWA). Eighteen neurologically healthy adults and twenty-one PWA participated in an fMRI semantic feature verification task that included typical and atypical stimuli from five different semantic categories. A whole-brain searchlight multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) was conducted to classify brain activation patterns between typical and atypical conditions in each participant group separately. Behavioral responses were faster and more accurate for typical vs. atypical items across both groups. The searchlight MVPA identified two significant clusters in healthy adults: left middle occipital gyrus and right calcarine cortex, but no significant clusters were found in PWA. A follow-up analysis in PWA revealed a significant association between neural classification of semantic typicality in the left middle occipital gyrus and reaction times in the fMRI task. When the typicality effect was examined for each semantic category at the univariate level, significance was identified in the visual cortex for fruits in both groups of participants. These findings suggest that semantic typicality was modulated in the visual cortex in healthy individuals, but to a lesser extent in the same region in PWA.