Language in context: emergent features of word, sentence, and narrative comprehension

Neural substrates of narrative comprehension and memory

“…First, it is unclear whether narrative comprehension depends on narrative-specific neural mechanisms or more general coherence-building mechanisms that are also involved in sentence-level comprehension. At least one previous study that directly contrasted narrative-level and sentencelevel comprehension found narrative-specific activation in regions such as ATL, posterior MTG, and DMPFC (Xu et al, 2005). However, other studies have observed greater activation in most of these regions when reading or hearing coherent sentences than random word lists (Bottini et al, 1994;Kuperberg et al, 2000;Stowe et al, 1999;Vandenberghe et al, 2002), suggesting that the difference between narrative-and sentence-level comprehension may be quantitative and not qualitative.…”

“…Many of these regions are known to play a relatively general role in language processing -e.g., areas along the middle and superior temporal gyri and inferior frontal cortex (Binder et al, 1994;Ferstl and von Cramon, 2001;Huettner et al, 1989;Maguire et al, 1999;Robertson et al, 2000;St George et al, 1999), which show consistent recruitment in a broad range of word-level language tasks (Fiez and Petersen, 1998;Turkeltaub et al, 2002;Vigneau et al, 2006). However, other regions appear to be specifically recruited during comprehension of coherent text, including the anterior temporal lobes (ATL; Ferstl et al, 2007;Mazoyer et al, 1993;Stowe et al, 1998;Stowe et al, 2005) and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC; Hasson et al, 2007;Xu et al, 2005).…”

“…Most commonly, narrative-level mechanisms are isolated by contrasting brain activation when reading connected sentences or stories with activation when reading sentences or stories that are unrelated or inconsistent to varying degrees (e.g., Ferstl et al, 2005;Ferstl andvon Cramon, 2001, 2002;Fletcher et al, 1995;Giraud, 2000;Hasson et al, 2007;Vogeley et al, 2001;Xu et al, 2005). The results of such investigations converge on a distributed network of cortical regions subserving discourse-level comprehension.…”

Narrative speech production: An fMRI study using continuous arterial spin labeling

“…Several studies have used fMRI to monitor the appreciation of narrative coherence, finding that bilateral medial and lateral frontal and anterior temporal regions are activated while listening to a narrative relative to baselines involving rest or unrelated sentences (Fletcher et al, 1995;Gallagher, 2000;Mazoyer et al, 1993;Xu, Kemeny, Park, Frattali, & Braun, 2005). A more explicit approach to the evaluation of narrative reported left medial prefrontal activation during explicit judgments of the coherence of pairs of sentences (Ferstl et al, 2002) or coherence judgments depending on the presence of definite articles (Robertson et al, 2000).…”

“…fMRI has many advantages over PET due to its superior spatial resolution, non-invasiveness, and absence of ionizing radiation. However, many challenges must be overcome during the collection of speech data in the bore of a magnet (Birn, Cox, & Bandettini, 2004;Xu et al, 2005). These are due to facial muscle and tongue use, head movement, and other artifact-producing aspects of speech production.…”