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The neural basis of visual and language tendencies in modes of thinking
Poster C17 in Poster Session C, Wednesday, October 25, 10:15 am - 12:00 pm CEST, Espace Vieux-Port
Huichao Yang1, Xiaoying Wang1, Tao Wei1, Jiahui Lu1, Yanchao Bi1,2; 1Beijing Normal University, 2Chinese Institute for Brain Research
Human brain possesses rich internal representations of the world, supporting various types of cognitive processes. Recent studies have revealed intriguing individual variations in terms of the experiential modes of such internal processes, with people reporting to have different degrees of inclinations to experience internal visual or language (verbal and orthographic) modes (e.g., Internal Representation Questionnaire, IRQ, Roebuck and Lupyan, 2020). We tested whether such subjective differences reflect neural trait differences by examining the relationship between IRQ scores and the intrinsic and task-based brain activity patterns. The relationship between internal mode inclinations and resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) patterns were examined using rsfMRI and IRQ data (N = 45). Leave-one-subject-out support vector regression (SVR) was performed to test if one’s rsFC pattern could predict her visual or language scores on the IRQ. The whole-brain rsFC pattern (180 cerebral brain partitions, Craddock et al., 2012) significantly predicted IRQ visual score (r (44) = 0.362, permutation (5000) p = 0.006; mean absolute error (MAE) = 0.428, permutation (5000) p = 0.010) and IRQ verbal score (r (44) = 0.367, permutation (5000) p = 0.017). At the region of interest level, the rsFC patterns of visual ROIs (the early visual cortex and lateral occipital cortex) predicted IRQ visual score (rs > 0.416, MAEs < 0.423, both FDR-corrected ps < 0.01), and of the language network ROIs predicted IRQ verbal score (rs > 0.366, MAEs < 0.514, both FDR-corrected ps < 0.01). Whether internal mode inclinations affect how the brain responds to external stimuli was examined with a word reading fMRI task (N = 45) and a picture naming fMRI task (N = 25). In the word reading task, the whole brain activity pattern predicted IRQ orthographic score (r (44) = 0.327, permutation (5000) p = 0.001; MAE = 0.596, permutation (5000) p = 0.013), with significant correlations observed in the right visual word form area (VWFA; r (44) = 0.416, p = 0.004) and the language network (r (44) = 0.323, p = 0.031). In the picture naming experiment, the activation strength of the early visual cortex significantly correlated with IRQ visual score (r (24) = -0.452, p = 0.023). Taken together, individual variations in terms of subjective internal process mode differences are indeed systematically associate with brain differences: individuals with higher internal visual tendencies associate with early visual cortices’ specific functional connectivity pattern at rest and weaker responses to picture stimuli; those with stronger language tendencies associate with language network’s specific functional connectivity patterns at rest and stronger right VWFA activation to visual word stimuli. Such individual neural variations underlying the internal representation modes invite further considerations for knowledge representation mechanisms and for interpreting brain data more broadly.
Topic Areas: Meaning: Lexical Semantics, Multisensory or Sensorimotor Integration