Thus, neural priming (suppression) was low in brain areas related to phonetic/articulatory processing but high in areas related to conflict processes (Table 5). Moreover, the right STG and bilateral IFG (BA 47) were suppressed. Both bilateral STG and left IFG were demonstrated for semantic priming (Wible et al. 2006). The right-hemisphere homolog of left IFG also has shown to be involved in neural priming (Maccotta and Buckner 2004; Wig et al. 2005; Schacter et al. 2007). Left dominant STG has been related to lexical-phonological processing (Indefrey and Levelt 2004) and BA 47 to semantic memory retrieval (Vigneau et al. Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical 2006). Finally, for categorical distractors we found additional reductions

in sensory-motor areas (bilateral postcentral gyrus; SMA-proper: Alario et al. 2006; insula/parietal operculum: Kurth et al. 2010; Eickhoff et al. 2006) Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical and areas related to lexical-phonological processing (bilateral STG). Thus, the pattern of deactivations for both semantic distractors corporates perceptual and conceptual aspects of priming. At large, for Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical categorical distractors the extent and plenitude of primed areas were lowest (see Table 5, Fig. 6). They placed high demands on conceptual processing, semantic retrieval, cognitive control, and memory processes just as unrelated distractors, and they equally recruited areas previously shown to be implicated in erroneous

and effortful word production (cerebellum, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical brainstem; Abel et al. 2009b; Christoffels et al. 2007). Left ACC related to monitoring was primed/suppressed; nevertheless, left ACC previously has shown to be strongly engaged at least in comparison to phonological distractors (Abel et al. 2009a: voxel P uncorrected = 0.004, Z = 2.62; Talairach, x = –9, y = 38, z = 6; see also left rostral ACC in Fig. 6) (see De Zubicaray et al. 2001). The engagement of other conflict processes is similar

to the one for unrelated distractors which place high demands, since only a part of left ACC is primed in comparison to the unrelated distractor (see Table 5). There was also prominent suppression Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical of sensory-motor regions. Even though in priming paradigms activity reductions often appear to spare motor areas (Maccotta and Buckner 2004), suppression in premotor areas has been reported (e.g., Rissman et al. 2003). (Joint) Repetition enhancement Linifanib (ABT-869) for distractor types Moreover, we aimed to investigate if enhanced brain activations were distractor unspecific at a lowered threshold. We also performed conjunction analyses to reveal if combinations of distractor types yielded overlapping enhanced activations. As a result, there was no brain area MEK inhibitor commonly increased for all distractor types. However, each facilitatory distractor (phonologically or associatively related) enhanced activation in left MTG and inferior parietal lobule (BA 40), with the latter being jointly activated (Fig. 4).