Localization of Syntactic Comprehension by Positron Emission Tomography

Stromswold, Karin; Caplan, David; Alpert, Nathaniel M.; Rauch, Scott L.

doi:10.1006/brln.1996.0024

Cited by 601 publications

(477 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…In visual sentence comprehension, this result for the inferior frontal region is consistent with findings in several studies [Caplan et al, 1998;Just et al, 1996;Stromswold et al, 1996] that vary in the tasks, baselines, and sentence types, but which all reported an increase in the activation in this region with increasing complexity. The results are also consistent with an auditory study that found increases in the inferior frontal region for more complex sentences [Caplan et al, 1999].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

“…Generally, comparisons across such studies have shown roughly similar areas of activation, nearly always including two cortical areas, the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and the left posterior superior and middle temporal gyri [e.g., Caplan et al, 1998Caplan et al, , 1999Just et al, 1996;Keller et al, 2001;Mazoyer et al, 1993;Schlosser et al, 1998;Stromswold et al, 1996].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A number of neuroimaging studies propose a role for the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) in syntactic processing [e.g., Caplan et al, 1998Caplan et al, , 1999Just et al, 1996;Keller et al, 2001;Mazoyer et al, 1993;Schlosser et al, 1998;Stromswold et al, 1996] as well as a role in semantic processing and working memory [Fiez, 1997;Fiez and Petersen, 1998;Gabrieli et al, 1998;Petersen et al, 1989Petersen et al, , 1990. One possible role of LIFG in sentence comprehension is that it might be involved in generating a serial order-based representation that serves as input to other linguistic processes, a hypothesis intended to apply to the syntactic as well as other levels of representation [Keller et al, 2001].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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fMRI investigation of sentence comprehension by eye and by ear: Modality fingerprints on cognitive processes

Michael

Keller

Carpenter

et al. 2001

Human Brain Mapping

130

114

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Abstract:The neural substrate underlying reading vs. listening comprehension of sentences was compared using fMRI. One way in which this issue was addressed was by comparing the patterns of activation particularly in cortical association areas that classically are implicated in language processing. The precise locations of the activation differed between the two modalities. In the left inferior frontal gyrus (Broca's area), the activation associated with listening was more anterior and inferior than the activation associated with reading, suggesting more semantic processing during listening comprehension. In the left posterior superior and middle temporal region (roughly, Wernicke's area), the activation for listening was closer to primary auditory cortex (more anterior and somewhat more lateral) than the activation for reading. In several regions, the activation was much more left lateralized for reading than for listening. In addition to differences in the location of the activation, there were also differences in the total amount of activation in the two modalities in several regions. A second way in which the modality comparison was addressed was by examining how the neural systems responded to comprehension workload in the two modalities by systematically varying the structural complexity of the sentences to be processed. Here, the distribution of the workload increase associated with the processing of additional structural complexity was very similar across the two input modalities. The results suggest a number of subtle differences in the cognitive processing underlying listening vs. reading comprehension. Hum. Brain Mapping 13:239-252, 2001.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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fMRI investigation of sentence comprehension by eye and by ear: Modality fingerprints on cognitive processes

Michael

Keller

Carpenter

et al. 2001

Human Brain Mapping

130

114

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“…Indeed, we have previously reported that a selective priming effect on syntactic decisions, but not on semantic decisions, was induced when event-related transcranial magnetic stimulation was administered to the left IFG with a specific timing . Previous neuroimaging studies have also reported syntactic complexity effects on left IFG activation in English sentences [Dapretto and Bookheimer, 1999;Stromswold et al, 1996], as well as an effect of grammatical rules contrasted with linguistically illegal rules [Musso et al, 2003] or an effect of the language-specific linearization rules for arguments [Grewe et al, 2005[Grewe et al, , 2006 as noted earlier. The present study further clarifies a specific and independent role of the left dF3t during the noncanonical processing of syntactic reanalysis.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 55%

Neural correlates of noncanonical syntactic processing revealed by a picture‐sentence matching task

Kinno¹,

Kawamura²,

Shioda³

et al. 2007

Human Brain Mapping

107

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It remains controversial whether the left inferior frontal gyrus subserves syntactic processing or short-term memory demands. Here we devised a novel picture-sentence matching task involving Japanese sentences with different structures to clearly contrast syntactic reanalysis processes. Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), activations under three main conditions were directly compared: a canonical/subject-initial active sentence (AS), a noncanonical/subject-initial passive sentence (PS), and a noncanonical/object-initial scrambled sentence (SS). We found that activation in the dorsal region of the left inferior frontal gyrus (dF3t) was enhanced more by the noncanonical processing under the PS and SS conditions than by the canonical processing under the AS condition, and this enhancement was independent of domain-general factors, such as general memory demands and task difficulty. Moreover, the left posterior superior/middle temporal gyrus (pSTG/ MTG) showed more enhanced responses to object-initial sentences under the SS condition than to subject-initial sentences under the AS and PS conditions, which were not significantly affected by task difficulty. Furthermore, activation in the left lateral premotor cortex (LPMC) increased under the AS, PS, and SS conditions, in that order. It is possible that task difficulty affects the left LPMC, but the three distinct activations patterns suggest that these frontal and temporal regions work in concert to process syntactic structures, with their respective contributions dynamically regulated by linguistic requirements. Hum Brain Mapp 29: [1015][1016][1017][1018][1019][1020][1021][1022][1023][1024][1025][1026][1027] 2008. V V C 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

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“…Three regions have traditionally been identified as candidates for syntactic processing (Fedorenko et al, 2012;Friederici and Kotz, 2003;Grodzinsky and Friederici, 2006;Kaan and Swaab, 2002). Historically, Broca's area or left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) has been most associated with syntax (Ben-Shachar et al, 2003;Ben-Shachar et al, 2004;Bornkessel-Schlesewsky et al, 2009;Caplan et al, 2008;Caplan et al, 2000;Carramazza and Zurif, 1976;Dapretto and Bookheimer, 1999;Embick et al, 2000;Friederici et al, 2006;Grodzinsky, 2001;Just et al, 1996;Santi and Grodzinsky, 2007;Stromswold et al, 1996). In addition, the left anterior temporal lobe (ATL) has often been linked to computations related to the manipulation of syntactic structure (Brennan et al,…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language structure in the brain: A fixation-related fMRI study of syntactic surprisal in reading

et al. 2016

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How is syntactic analysis implemented by the human brain during language comprehension? The current study combined methods from computational linguistics, eyetracking, and fMRI to address this question. Subjects read passages of text presented as paragraphs while their eye movements were recorded in an MRI scanner. We parsed the text using a probabilistic context-free grammar to isolate syntactic difficulty. Syntactic difficulty was quantified as syntactic surprisal, which is related to the expectedness of a given word's syntactic category given its preceding context. We compared words with high and low syntactic surprisal values that were equated for length, frequency, and lexical surprisal, and used fixation-related (FIRE) fMRI to measure neural activity associated with syntactic surprisal for each fixated word. We observed greater neural activity for high than low syntactic surprisal in two predicted cortical regions previously identified with syntax: left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and less robustly, left anterior superior temporal lobe (ATL). These results support the hypothesis that left IFG and ATL play a central role in syntactic analysis during language comprehension. More generally, the results suggest a broader cortical network associated with syntactic prediction that includes increased activity in bilateral IFG and insula, as well as fusiform and right lingual gyri.© 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords:Language Syntax Surprisal Reading Eye movements fMRI IntroductionA complete theory of the human brain must include a description of the neural networks responsible for language processing. Comprehension of connected sentences requires the ability to retrieve words from the lexicon and relate those words to each other, as the input is encountered in real time. The system for creating these groupings is known as syntax, and is generally thought of as a set of computations specifying syntactic categories such as noun and verb, and stating how those categories combine into increasingly larger constituents such as noun phrases, verb phrases, and clauses. The constituent structure of a sentence is the frame on which interpretations are built; the same words will have radically different meanings depending on that structure (e.g., the dog bit the man vs. the man bit the dog). Thus, the human ability to understand language is based both on lexical knowledge and syntactic computations.In this study, we focused on understanding how the human brain implements the syntactic component of the human language faculty. Specifically, we were interested in the nature of the cortical systems that compute syntactic representations during online language comprehension. Three regions have traditionally been identified as candidates for syntactic processing (Fedorenko et al., 2012;Friederici and Kotz, 2003;Grodzinsky and Friederici, 2006;Kaan and Swaab, 2002). Historically, Broca's area or left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) has been most associated with syntax (Ben-Shachar et al., 2003;Ben-Shachar et al., 2004;...

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Localization of Syntactic Comprehension by Positron Emission Tomography

Cited by 601 publications

References 43 publications

fMRI investigation of sentence comprehension by eye and by ear: Modality fingerprints on cognitive processes

fMRI investigation of sentence comprehension by eye and by ear: Modality fingerprints on cognitive processes

Neural correlates of noncanonical syntactic processing revealed by a picture‐sentence matching task

Language structure in the brain: A fixation-related fMRI study of syntactic surprisal in reading

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