Book Chapter in Encyclopedia of the Human Brain (Second Edition) 2025
Abstract
Word production and comprehension both require mapping between the meaning, form, and syntactical representations of the word. We refer to the collective set of processes involved in performing this mapping as lexical selection. In the field of word production research, how lexical selection is carried out in the brain is studied using many different methods (e.g., brain imaging with spatial or spatio-temporal resolution, brain stimulation, lesion-symptom mapping), different tasks (different kinds of naming and control tasks), and different experimental paradigms or manipulations (e.g., picture-word interference, blocked-cyclic naming, continuous naming). In this article, we bring together evidence from different word production studies to summarize our current understanding of the spatial and temporal underpinnings of lexical selection.
Keywords
Aphasia; Brain stimulation; Electrophysiology; Lesion-symptom mapping; Lexical selection; Naming; Neuroimaging; Semantic context effects; Speech; Temporal lobe; Word production