Neural Connectivity in Syntactic Movement Processing

Abstract

Linguistic theory suggests non-canonical sentences subvert the dominant agent-verb-theme order in English via displacement of sentence constituents to argument (NP-movement) or non-argument positions (wh-movement). Both processes have been associated with the left inferior frontal gyrus and posterior superior temporal gyrus, but differences in neural activity and connectivity between movement types have not been investigated. In the current study, functional magnetic resonance imaging data were acquired from 21 adult participants during an auditory sentence-picture verification task using passive and active sentences contrasted to isolate NP-movement, and object- and subject-cleft sentences contrasted to isolate wh-movement. Then, functional magnetic resonance imaging data from regions common to both movement types were entered into a dynamic causal modeling analysis to examine effective connectivity for wh-movement and NP-movement. Results showed greater left inferior frontal gyrus activation for Wh > NP-movement , but no activation for NP > Wh-movement . Both types of movement elicited activity in the opercular part of the left inferior frontal gyrus, left posterior superior temporal gyrus, and left medial superior frontal gyrus. The dynamic causal modeling analyses indicated that neither movement type significantly modulated the connection from the left inferior frontal gyrus to the left posterior superior temporal gyrus, nor vice-versa, suggesting no connectivity differences between wh- and NP-movement. These findings support the idea that increased complexity of wh-structures, compared to sentences with NP-movement, requires greater engagement of cognitive resources via increased neural activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus, but both movement types engage similar neural networks.

Brain Regions Involved in Underlying Syntactic Processing of Mandarin Chinese Intransitive Verbs: An fMRI Study

“…Our f MRI results showed that compared to the control task, the processing of deep unaccusative sentences, unergative sentences, and passive sentences in Mandarin Chinese elicited greater activation in the LIFG, the LSTG, and the LMTG. The results indicate that these regions might perform a significant function in processing language, which has consistently been supported by numerous studies exploring the neural mechanisms of language processing (e.g., [30,[39][40][41][42]). In addition, the processing of the control condition elicited greater activation in the occipital lobe, which was related to visual processing [43].…”

“…Consequently, in Mandarin Chinese, the subject of passive verbs should experience an additional syntactic movement from the object position to the subject position in the generation process. Theoretical accounts [24,28,48] and experimental studies [30,32] also agree that Mandarin Chinese passive sentences are structures derived by a syntactic movement, which is consistent with that of many other languages. According to previous theoretical and experimental research, the LSTG concerning passive sentence processing in the present experiment was likely related to the syntactic movement of the subject in passive sentences.…”

“…Previous work has proposed that left temporal lobes are critical to language processing [38,44,45], and the left posterior temporal gyrus has also been found in many studies exploring the syntactic processing of passive sentences. For example, recent f MRI studies have found that passive sentences prompted more activation in the left posterior temporal gyrus compared with active sentences [30,32].…”

“…Additionally, syntactic movement in passive sentence processing has been demonstrated by several f MRI studies, which found that the neural processing of passive sentences induced activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and the left posterior temporal gyrus compared to that of active sentences. These brain regions play a key role in syntactic movement, which is involved in passive sentence processing rather than that of the active one [30][31][32]. Therefore, to investigate whether the subject of deep unaccusative sentences experiences an additional syntactic movement compared with that of unergative sentences in Mandarin Chinese, it is important to explore the neural processing of passive sentences and compare it with Mandarin deep unaccusative and unergative sentences.…”

Application of electrical brain stimulation in the auditory language processing

“…。还有 (Hackett, 2011;Yi et al, 2019;Hickok & Poeppel, 2007;Friederici, 2012;Gierhan, 2013;Skeide & Friederici, 2016 Enatsu et al, 2013;Matsumoto et al, 2017 (den Ouden et al, 2012 ;Europa et al, 2019;Friederici, 2012;Gierhan, 2013;Hickok & Poeppel, 2007;Schneider et al, 2016) (Europa et al, 2019;Friederici, 2012;Liu et al, 2020;Lyu et al, 2016;Zhang et al, 2019 )。此外, 大脑也会利用自上而下的反馈途径来协助快速识 别信息 (Friederici, 2012;Lyu et al, 2016;Oestreich et al, 2018;Zhang et al, 2019 ) (Enatsu et al, 2013;Entz et al, 2014;Garell, 2013;Kanno et al, 2018;Keller et al, 2011;Matsumoto et al, 2004;Nakae et al, 2020;Nishida et al, 2017) Keller et al, 2011;Entz et al, 2014;Nishida et al, 2017) 4), 440-445. Amunts, K., Lenzen, M., Friederici, A. D., Schleicher, A.,…”