Naming: Nouns and Verbs

Intraoperative mapping of the neural processes that support noun and verb production has generally focused on naming of objects and actions. Action naming has been proposed as a good complement to object naming for intraoperative language mapping. While action naming taps into similar language functions as object naming, the processing of verbs may also recruit partially different neural substrates and tap into morphosyntactic processes that are particularly relevant in everyday communication. In this chapter, we review the neural basis of object and action naming, long-term deficits in people who did not benefit from its intraoperative use, knowledge gained from lesion-symptom mapping, variations in the design of these tasks, functional improvement as a function of the type of mapping carried out, and some of the anatomo-functional knowledge we have from prior studies on awake mapping. Finally, we step back to situate action naming in two broader contexts: a subtype of verb processing on the one hand, and nonlinguistic knowledge of objects and actions more generally. Looking forward, there are many exciting questions to be pursued using action naming in an intraoperative context, and the clinical preparation afforded by awake language mapping holds tremendous potential to disclose new insights about the neural basis of nouns and verbs.