The relationship of fMRI neuroactivation changes to response rate on a word fluency task

A number of cortical areas have been shown to become activated during overt and covert word generation (t). In this study an attempt is made to investigate further the function of one such area. The area in question is in the grey matter on either side of the left pre-central sulcus (Brodman's area 6), which was activated using a covert word generation task so that motor control of vocalisation was not involved. The hypothesis to be tested is that such a region, when activated, shows bias towards output (ie the more words generated the larger the activation).