3 whole brain 1-back localizers: phonological task (rhyming), semantic task (semantic categorization), visual task (match orthography)

Description: These three localizer tasks were carried out in the context of a study on the cerebellar role in semantic prediction. (E. Lesage, P.C.Hansen, & R.C. Miall (2017). Right Lateral Cerebellum Represents Linguistic Predictability. Journal of Neuroscience, 37 (26), 6231-6241.) Localizer tasks for semantic, phonological and orthographic working memory: When reading a sentence (or a sentence stem), processes in addition to semantic prediction take place. When reading words, one processes the meaning of these words (attention to semantics). When reading words or pronounceable non-words, one processes phonological features of these words (attention to phonology). When looking at words or non-words, one recognizes and processes a visual stimulus with a certain spatial configuration (attention to orthography or visuospatial attention). In order to assess whether any cerebellar areas that differentially respond to predictive sentences were also preferentially engaged when orthographic, phonological or semantic properties were held in short-term store, participants also performed three epoch-related localizing tasks. To maximize comparability between tasks and to have low level of working memory load, all three tasks were 1-back tasks and were contrasted with 0-back versions of the same task. The participants were required press a button on an MRI compatible response box if the current stimulus belonged to the same semantic category as the previous stimulus (semantic 1-back), if the current stimulus rhymed with the previous stimulus (phonological 1-back) or if the current stimulus was identical to the previous stimulus (orthographic 1-back). Similar tasks have previously been used to capture orthographic and phonological processing (Paulesu et al., 1993; Koyama et al., 2013). Three 0-back control conditions required the participants to respond when a known target stimulus appeared. The 0-back controls blocks were performed as separate runs from the 1-back blocks. More methods info: http://www.jneurosci.org/content/37/26/6231