Examples of the postscan comprehension task stimuli. Picture A serves as a match for Sentence A and a mismatch for Sentence B. Picture B serves as a match for Sentence B and a mismatch for Sentence A.

Visualization of primary sensory-motor cortex: negative correlation between neural activity when listening to hockey action sentences and postscan hockey language comprehension. (a) The right hemispheric region shown in blue was significant (P < 0.005, corrected) at the whole-brain level. To visualize this region as part of a larger primary sensory-motor network, it is overlain onto voxels showing a negative correlation at the reduced threshold of P < 0.05, uncorrected (depicted in yellow). To test for laterality, this region was reflected over the y axis (shown in the left hemisphere in green). (b) Activity in the left and right ROIs broken down by group. The y axis represents neural activity in the form of β-estimates for the hockey action condition. Error bars represent SEM. (c and d) Visualization of the linear relationship (across all 29 subjects) between neural activity (represented as β-estimates) (see Methods) and hockey language comprehension for each hemisphere (left hemisphere: r = −0.51, P < 0.005; right hemisphere: r = −0.68, P < 0.001).

Visualization of dorsal premotor cortex: positive correlation between neural activity when listening to hockey action sentences and postscan hockey language comprehension. (a) The left hemispheric region shown in orange was significant (P < 0.005, corrected) at the whole-brain level. To visualize this region as part of a larger premotor network, it is overlain onto voxels showing a positive correlation at the reduced threshold of P < 0.05, uncorrected (depicted in yellow). To test for laterality, this region was reflected over the y axis (shown in the right hemisphere in dark red). (b) Activity in the left and right ROIs broken down by hockey experience group. The y axis represents neural activity in the form of β-estimates for the hockey action sentences. Error bars represent SEM. (c and d) Visualization of the linear relationship (across all 29 subjects) between neural activity (represented as β-estimates) (see Methods) and hockey language comprehension for each hemisphere (left hemisphere: r = 0.61, P < 0.001; right hemisphere: r = 0.41, P = 0.05).

Mediation analysis of the relation between hockey experience and hockey-action language comprehension. (A) A regression analysis established that hockey experience [as reflected in a rank ordering based on hockey exposure from (i) novices to (ii) fans to (iii) players] had a significant positive effect on hockey language comprehension (β = 0.37, t = 2.06, P < 0.05). (B) Hockey experience also had a significant positive effect on left dorsal premotor activity while passively listening to hockey-related sentences (β = 0.46, t = 2.72, P < 0.02) and bore a significant negative relation to bilateral primary sensory-motor activity while passively listening to hockey-related sentences (β = −0.43, t = 2.49, P < 0.02). Both left dorsal premotor activity (β = 0.61, t = 3.98, P < 0.001) and bilateral primary sensory-motor activity (β = −0.64, t = 4.31, P < 0.001) were significant predictors of language comprehension. When hockey experience, left dorsal premotor activity, and bilateral primary sensory-motor activity were simultaneously entered as predictors of hockey sentence comprehension, experience no longer significantly predicted comprehension (β = 0.008, ns), whereas both left dorsal premotor activity (β = 0.37, t = 2.13, P < 0.05) and bilateral primary sensory-motor activity (β = −0.44, t = 2.55, P < 0.02) remained significant in the equation. A Sobel test (45) of the reduction in the direct relation between experience and comprehension for both left premotor (z = 2.24, P < 0.03) and bilateral sensory-motor (z = 2.80, P < 0.01) was significant. This series of analyses provides support for our conclusion that hockey experience facilitates hockey language comprehension through relatively increased activity in left dorsal premotor cortex and relatively decreased activity in bilateral sensory-motor cortex.