A "wordy” endeavor: Functional near-infrared spectroscopy for investigating angular gyrus function and lateralization

Poster Session D - Monday, April 15, 2024, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Sheraton Hall ABC

Hannah Potts¹, Youstina Tadros¹, Siena DeAngelo¹, Savannah Campbell¹, Carole Scherling¹; ¹Belmont University

A better understanding of language, and available tools to probe neurological correlates, informs not only neuroscience research and is valuable in clinical interventions. One parietal region associated with reading and comprehension is the angular gyrus (Seghier, 2012). Language is consistently associated with handedness, with right-handers showing left hemispheric lateralization (Knecht, 2000) and more variable hemispheric dominance in left-handers (Bidula, 2017). These patterns of activation have been observed with many imaging tools, such as fMRI and EEG but has not been largely studied using a novel tool, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). This is a non-invasive imaging technique using infrared light to detect oxygenated and deoxygenated blood, as a measure of brain activation (https://nirx.net/). The angular gyrus is not an area that has been extensively studied using fNIRS. The current study investigated fNIRS’ capability to measure angular gyrus activity during a word/non-word forced-choice discrimination task in a sample of 62 undergraduate participants. We predict detection ability of this tool for functioning of this brain region as well as its capacity to reveal expected left-lateralization in a right-hand cohort. Preliminary analysis for right handers revealed bilateral angular gyrus activity during the task (3 of 4 channels active in the right hemisphere and 2 of 4 channels for the left hemisphere), (p<0.05). Meanwhile, no lateralization effects were revealed for left handers. This indicates that there are potential differences in hemispheric lateralization of the angular gyrus when making semantic judgements, which may be modulated by handedness.

Topic Area: LANGUAGE: Other