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12/06/07
New Study Reveals Neural Basis for Tip-of-the-Tongue Experiences |
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You’ve known the person for years but you just can’t think
of their name. You know it’s not Mark but sounds something
like that. It’s just on the tip of your tongue…
Tip-of-the-tongue (TOTs) experiences are a common language
phenomena which dramatically interrupt normally effortless
speech. They cause significant discomfort and frustration at
any age, but TOTs increase with age, and older adults report
TOTs as their most frequent and troubling cognitive problem.
Prof. Deborah Burke’s newest research, published in the
December issue of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience,
identifies for the first-time a neural basis for
word-finding failures, those situations where people are
temporarily unable to produce a word they are certain they
know.
The research project involved magnetic resonance images (MRI)
of healthy participants between 19 and 88 years old and used
voxel-based morphometry (VBM) to measure grey matter density
throughout the brain. In a separate session, participants
named celebrities cued by pictures and descriptions,
indicating when they had a TOT, and completed the Raven’s
Progressive Matrices, a non-verbal test of cognitive
ability.
The number of TOTs increased with age and also with grey
matter atrophy in the left insula, an area implicated in
phonological production. The relation between TOTs and left
insula atrophy could not be attributed to the correlation of
each variable with age because TOTs were related to insula
atrophy even with age effects removed. Moreover, errors on
the RPM increased with age, but performance did not
correlate with grey matter density in the insula.
“Because there is considerable brain atrophy with age,”
explains Burke, “our finding that the number of TOTs is
related to the amount of insula atrophy has the greatest
significance for older adults and their age-related
increases in TOTs. However, TOTs are related to the size of
the insula even in younger adults, it's just that the
variation in the insula here is smaller, and so is the
variation in number of TOTs.
THE GOOD NEWS
“While age-related atrophy in the brain is currently
irreversible,” says Burke, “the good news is that you can
have atrophy in one area of the brain but other areas can
pick up those functions.”
“The best way to strengthen those connections is to exercise
your language skills, use language and use words,” says
Burke. “I urge older adults to do things like read aloud,
talk to people at dinner and play games like Scrabble which
exercise their language skills. Playing games like bingo,
poker or bridge, require little language and thus would
probably not aid in word finding, though if you analyze your
game with other players and socialize before and after
playing, it should strengthen word production.
THE EXPERT
Burke, the W.M. Keck Professor of Distinguished Service and
a professor of psychology and linguistics and cognitive
science at Pomona College, is a five-time winner of the
Pomona College Wig Distinguished Professor Award for
Excellence in Teaching. She has received research support
for her work on memory and language from the National
Institutes of Health since 1989 and has discussed her
research with a variety of media outlets over the years,
including BBC Radio and National Public Radio.
The article, “On the tip-of-the-tongue: Neural correlates of
increased word-finding failures in normal aging,” was
co-authored with Meredith Shafto ’96 and Phyllis P. Tam ’04
(both from Pomona College and Cambridge University), and
Emmanuel A. Stamatakis and Lorraine Tyler (from Cambridge).
JOURNAL OF COGNITIVE SCIENCE WEBSITE:
http://jocn.mitpress.org
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