Neural correlates of conflict between gestures and words: A domain-specific role for a temporal-parietal complex

In the color task, participants were presented the words “red” and “green” in either red or green font and were asked to identify the color of the letters. We observed a classic “Stroop” behavioral interference effect, with participants showing increased response time for incongruent trials relative to congruent ones for both the gesture and color tasks. Hemodynamic signals acquired using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) were increased in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) for incongruent trials relative to congruent trials for both tasks consistent with a common, domain-general mechanism for detecting conflict.

However, activity in the left DLPFC and frontal eye fields and the right temporal-parietal junction (TPJ), superior temporal gyrus (STG), supramarginal gyrus (SMG), and primary and auditory association cortices was greater for the gesture task than the color task. Thus, in addition to domain-general conflict processing mechanisms, as suggested by common engagement of right DLPFC, socially specialized neural modules localized to the left DLPFC and right TPJ including adjacent homologous receptive language areas were engaged when processing conflicting communications.

These findings contribute to an emerging view of specialization within the TPJ and adjacent areas for interpretation of social cues and indicate a role for the region in processing social conflict. For documentation, please see the PlosOne article. The manuscript has the paradigm outlined in figure one, and Column 1 is time, Column 2 is the tgiggers outlined in figure 1.

Column 3 is not used. The subsequent columns are oxy, deoxy, and totalHb values from Channels 1-98, respectively. For each subject there is also a 3d coordinate file which is pre-processed to be used in SPM-NIRS, but represents each subjects channel locations with their respective skull landmarks.