Task Type Affects Location of Language-Positive Cortical Regions by Repetitive Navigated Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Mapping

OBJECTIVES: Recent repetitive TMS (rTMS) mapping protocols for language mapping revealed deficits of this method, mainly in posterior brain regions. Therefore this study analyzed the impact of different language tasks on the localization of language-positive brain regions and compared their effectiveness, especially with regard to posterior brain regions. METHODS: Nineteen healthy, right-handed subjects performed object naming, pseudoword reading, verb generation, and action naming during rTMS language mapping of the left hemisphere. Synchronically, 5 Hz/10 pulses were applied with a 0 ms delay RESULTS: The object naming task evoked the highest error rate (14%), followed by verb generation (13%) and action naming (11%). The latter revealed more errors in posterior than in anterior areas. Pseudoword reading barely generated errors, except for phonological paraphasias. CONCLUSIONS: In general, among the evaluated language tasks, object naming is the most discriminative task to detect language-positive regions via rTMS. However, other tasks might be used for more specific questions.