2 sec. Subjects were instructed to name each picture as fast and accurately as possible and to attend to the distractor word as it may but need not assist word finding. RT analysis and interrater reliability After fMRI sessions, responses were consulted for Proteases inhibitor scoring of each participant’s correctness of naming responses and for the analysis of RTs including visual inspection
of the waveform (see Rastle and Davis 2002). Contrary to automated analyses, the manual extraction of RTs from the sound files with high signal-to-noise ratio does not depend on such variables as initial phoneme, individual participant Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical characteristics, or breathing into the microphone (see also Discussion section). Initial onsets were adequately Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical balanced across our conditions. In order to control for subjective variability of manual RT extraction, we examined the interrater reliability for four randomly selected subjects assessed by two speech pathologists. Interrater reliability over all conditions was high (r = 0.997, P < 0.001) with a mean difference
of 11.8 msec (SE = 1.1 msec). Image acquisition, processing, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical and analysis Anatomical (MPRAGE: data matrix, 256 × 256; TR, 2.2 sec; TE, 2.6 msec; pixel size, 1 mm3) and functional images (EPI sequence: data matrix, 64 × 64; FOV, 19.2 cm; TE, 30 msec; TR, 2.19 sec) were recorded on a 3T Siemens TIM-Trio with an 8-element head coil in a circularly polarized mode. Using continuous acquisition, functional data were acquired from 36 interleaved slices with 3 mm thickness. Images were analyzed with SPM 5 (http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm). Preprocessing included slice timing, coregistration and segmentation of the anatomical Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical image, normalization
using the parameters estimated during segmentation, and smoothing with a 12-mm full-width half-maximum (FWHM). Realignment parameters were only estimated because motion and distortion correction had been Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical performed beforehand by a scanner software (see Zaitsev et al. 2004). Trials that elicited acceptable naming responses (e.g., the distractor/picture pair Kugel/bowl and Kuchen/cake) were reclassified MRIP accordingly (e.g., naming response Torte/tart, reclassified from phonological to unrelated condition; 0.9% of all trials). A total of 4.4% of all trials were discarded because of naming errors. Picture onsets were modeled as the critical event using the canonical hemodynamic response function (HRF), and estimated realignment parameters were applied as multiple regressors in SPM 5. Statistical analyses comprised a calculation of main effects on the first and standard repeated measures ANOVAs on the second level (subtraction and conjunction analyses [conjunction null]). We intended to compare the unrelated distractor condition (UNREL) to the related linguistic distractor conditions (REL).