Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Brain and Cognition journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/b&c Looking at ancillary systems for verb recovery: Evidence from non-invasive brain stimulation F. Pisano, P. Marangolo ⁎ Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici, Università Federico II, Naples, Italy IRCCS, Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Embodied cognition Non-invasive brain stimulation Verb recovery Aphasia rehabilitation ABSTRACT Several behavioural and neuroimaging studies have suggested that the language function is not restricted into the left areas but it involves regions not predicted by the classical language model. Accordingly, the Embodied Cognition theory postulates a close interaction between the language and the motor system. Indeed, it has been shown that non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) is effective for language recovery also when applied over sensorimotor regions, such as the motor cortex, the cerebellum and the spinal cord. We will review a series of NIBS studies in post-stroke aphasic people aimed to assess the impact of NIBS on verb recovery. We first present results which, following the classical assumption of the Broca’s area as the key region for verb processing, have shown that the modulation over this area is efficacious for verb improvement. Then, we will present experiments which, according to Embodied Cognition, have directly investigated through NIBS the role of different sensorimotor regions in enhancing verb production. Since verbs play a crucial role for sentence construction which are most often impaired in the aphasic po- pulation, we believe that these results have important clinical implications. Indeed, they address the possibility that different structures might support verb processing. 1. Introduction Since the early nineteenth century, single-cases and anatomo-cor- relative studies on brain-damaged patients have reported evidence on how the language faculty is organized in the human brain (Broca, 1861; Lichtheim, 1885; Wernicke, 1874). Antiquitus, most models of language representation have suggested that the different language components are localized in specific areas of the left hemisphere. Indeed, several single cases and group studies have suggested that lesions to the left inferior frontal region (i.e. Broca's area) selectively damage speech production, while lesions to the left posterior superior temporal region (i.e. “Wernicke’s area”) impair auditory speech comprehension (Bi, Han, Shu, & Caramazza, 2007; Crepaldi, Berlingeri, Paulesu, & Luzzatti, 2011; Damasio, Tranel, & Caramazza, 1993; Kemmerer, 2014; Mätzig, Druks, Masterson, & Vigliocco, 2009; Moseley & Pulvermüller, 2014; Pillon & d’Honincthun, 2010; Shapiro & Caramazza, 2003; Silveri, Perri, & Cappa, 2003; Spezzano & Radanovic, 2010; Vigliocco, Vinson, Druks, Barber, & Cappa, 2011). In particular, the behavioural and neural processes underpinning different word classes, specifically nouns and verbs, have been a long- standing area of interest in psycholinguistic, and aphasiology research (Alyahya, Halai, Conroy, & Lambon Ralph, 2018). Indeed, given that several single case studies in aphasia have documented a double dis- sociation between nouns and verbs (Caramazza & Hillis, 1991; Laiacona & Caramazza, 2004; Miceli, Silveri, Nocentini, & Caramazza, 1988; Pisoni et al., 2018; Tomasino et al., 2018), the hypothesis has been advanced that the cerebral systems for the recovery of these classes of words are segregated in different areas of the brain. Miceli and col- leagues (1988) were the first to report a correlation between word-class specific impairments and impairments to different brain areas. In their study, participants with selective deficit for nouns were mostly affected by lesions in the left temporal areas, whereas participants with a pre- dominant verb impairment showed a damage to the left frontal cortex. The view that the frontal and temporal areas are differently involved in processing verbs and nouns, respectively, was further strengthened by Daniele, Giustolisi, Silveri, Colosimo, and Gainotti (1994). The authors compared the performance of two patients with frontal lobe atrophy and impairment in verb processing with the outcome of a third patient with temporal lobe atrophy and impairment in noun processing. The anatomical distinction between the two categories is not sur- prising as nouns and verbs differ in terms of their grammatical/syn- tactic properties as well as in their different amount of perceptual/ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2019.105515 Received 13 September 2019; Received in revised form 4 December 2019; Accepted 23 December 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici, University Federico II, Via Porta di Massa 1, 80133 Naples, Italy. E-mail address: paola.marangolo@gmail.com (P. Marangolo). Brain and Cognition 139 (2020) 105515 0278-2626/ © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. T