Abstract This study assessed the usefulness of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to study word production in the brain. As a test case, we focused on the semantic interference effect (SIE), which has been demonstrated in many behavioral studies and has also been studied using neuroimaging techniques. Experiment 1 examined whether fNIRS can identify neural correlates of the SIE in a cross-modal picture-word interference (PWI) paradigm. Native speakers of Flemish Dutch overtly named pictures in their first language (L1), while ignoring auditory distractor words either categorically related or unrelated to target names. Functional NIRS data were obtained from the bilateral frontal and temporal regions and analyzed with a general linear model. We observed the SIE in the naming latencies and fNIRS detected the SIE in the cortical language network including the inferior frontal gyrus, middle temporal gyrus, and precentral gyrus. Most areas showed a signal increase for the related condition compared with the unrelated condition. Experiment 2 tested whether fNIRS can pinpoint differences in neural activities related to semantic interference as a function of the target language in unbalanced bilinguals. Flemish Dutch-English unbalanced bilinguals therefore performed the same PWI task, but now with a second language (L2) naming condition as a separate block. We observed the SIE behaviorally in both language conditions; the size of the SIE was comparable in each language. FNIRS data indicated several channels showing different levels of sensitivity to the SIE between L1 and L2. Both experiments demonstrated that fNIRS could detect neural correlates of the SIE and target language. We will discuss the potential benefits and methodological concerns of using fNIRS for speech production research.

中文翻译：

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使用功能性近红外光谱研究大脑中的单词生成：图文干扰研究

摘要 本研究评估了功能性近红外光谱 (fNIRS) 在研究大脑中的单词生成方面的有用性。作为测试案例，我们专注于语义干扰效应 (SIE)，这已在许多行为研究中得到证明，并且也已使用神经成像技术进行了研究。实验 1 检查了 fNIRS 是否可以在跨模式图片字干扰 (PWI) 范式中识别 SIE 的神经相关性。母语为荷兰语的佛兰芒语以他们的第一语言 (L1) 公开命名图片，而忽略与目标名称绝对相关或无关的听觉干扰词。从双侧额叶和颞区获得功能性近红外光谱数据，并用一般线性模型进行分析。我们在命名潜伏期中观察到 SIE，fNIRS 在包括额下回、颞中回和中央前回在内的皮质语言网络中检测到 SIE。与不相关条件相比，大多数区域显示相关条件的信号增加。实验 2 测试了 fNIRS 是否可以确定与语义干扰相关的神经活动的差异，作为不平衡双语者中目标语言的函数。因此，佛兰德荷兰语-英语不平衡双语者执行相同的 PWI 任务，但现在将第二语言 (L2) 命名条件作为单独的块。我们在两种语言条件下都观察到了 SIE 的行为；SIE 的规模在每种语言中都是可比的。FNIRS 数据表明几个通道对 L1 和 L2 之间的 SIE 表现出不同程度的敏感性。两个实验都表明 fNIRS 可以检测 SIE 和目标语言的神经关联。我们将讨论使用 fNIRS 进行语音生成研究的潜在好处和方法论问题。