In particular, if neurons respond more strongly with more objects, the neural code of the target will be sufficiently preactivated when the prime is larger than the target, which allows fast naming of the target.
While both the veracity and the relevance of this claim are debatable, it succeeded in getting Fasts name all over the news this morning.
The freer people feel to choose names they like, rather than names of relatives or saints, the faster names go through cycles.
Anodal stimulation resulted in faster naming responses compared to sham stimulation.
Furthermore, faster naming responses correlated with decreased blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal in Broca's area.
These data suggest that faster naming responses are associated with a decreased BOLD response in left IFC, including Broca's area.
When primes were Arabic digits, a classic distance-dependent priming effect (faster naming of the target when the numerical distance between the prime and the target is small, see Reynvoet et al. 2002) was found.
Our hypothesis was that A-tDCS applied to left IFC would result in (1) an independent facilitation effect on naming, i.e., faster naming responses, with (2) an accompanying regionally specific reduced BOLD response in Broca's area, analogous to NP effects.
Indeed, in a more homogeneous group of patients, seven out of eight patients with posterior cortical or subcortical lesions showed faster naming responses after posterior anodal tDCS (Fridriksson et al., 2011), again highlighting the role of perilesional regions in supporting language processes.
Our data therefore suggest that the addition of colour decreased the demands on semantic processes in the left antero-medial temporal cortex, consistent with the faster naming times that we observed for the [form with colour] condition compared to form only condition (see Table 1).
