Neural correlates of syntactic transformations

Wartenburger, Isabell; Heekeren, Hauke R.; Burchert, Frank; Heinemann, Steffi; Bleser, Ria De; Villringer, Arno

doi:10.1002/hbm.20021

Cited by 39 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…Interestingly, the sentence complexity and taskdemand conditions did not interact (i.e., the task effect was equally robust for SR and OR sentences). We note that this finding of no different localization of subject and object relative constructions in terms of L-IFC activation is in line with the current work of Fiebach et al (2004) and Wartenburger et al (2004) who investigated canonical and non canonical forms.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…Most of this work has implicated left anterior frontal brain regions, specifically including Broca's area, in the processing of sentences with complex structure (Ben-Shachar et al, 2003;Caplan et al, 1998Caplan et al, , 1999Caplan et al, , 2001Cooke et al, 2001;Dapretto and Bookheimer, 1999;Friederici et al, 2000;Grossman et al, 2002;Heim et al, 2003;Inui et al, 1998;Just et al, 1996;Musso et al, 2003;Newman et al, 2001;Ni et al, 2000;Sakai et al, 2001;Stromswold et al, 1996;Waters et al, 2003;Wartenburger et al, 2004). In general, conclusions drawn from this research fit well with behavioral and lesion evidence gleaned over decades about the role of left inferior frontal cortex (L-IFC) including Broca's area.…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 73%

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A Functional Neuroimaging Investigation of the Roles of Structural Complexity and Task-Demand During Auditory Sentence Processing

Love

Haist

Nicol³

et al. 2006

Cortex

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Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), this study directly examined an issue that bridges the potential language processing and multi-modal views of the role of Broca's area: the effects of task-demands in language comprehension studies. We presented syntactically simple and complex sentences for auditory comprehension under three different (differentially complex) taskdemand conditions: passive listening, probe verification, and theme judgment. Contrary to many language imaging findings, we found that both simple and complex syntactic structures activated left inferior frontal cortex (L-IFC). Critically, we found activation in these frontal regions increased together with increased task-demands. Specifically, tasks that required greater manipulation and comparison of linguistic material recruited L-IFC more strongly; independent of syntactic structure complexity. We argue that much of the presumed syntactic effects previously found in sentence imaging studies of L-IFC may, among other things, reflect the tasks employed in these studies and that L-IFC is a region underlying mnemonic and other integrative functions, on which much language processing may rely.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 73%

A Functional Neuroimaging Investigation of the Roles of Structural Complexity and Task-Demand During Auditory Sentence Processing

Love

Haist

Nicol³

et al. 2006

Cortex

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Overall accuracy in sentence comprehension, regardless of morphosyntactic structure, was associated with the left middle posterior superior temporal gyrus and inferior parietal lobule, a finding that is consistent with previous studies of sentence com- prehension (Just et al, 1996;Stromswold et al, 1996;Carpenter et al, 1999;Dapretto and Bookheimer, 1999;Ni et al, 2000;Friederici et al, 2003;Ben-Shachar et al, 2004;Wartenburger et al, 2004). In the present study, the left temporal area showed a correlation with overall sentence comprehension abilities, but not with nonsyntactic vWM abilities, supporting its specificity for sentence processing.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…These sentences are "noncanonical" because of their atypical word order and can be difficult to understand for patients with Broca's aphasia. However, they do not consistently elicit left frontal activations in functional neuroimaging experiments when compared with active structures (Caplan, 2000;Ni et al, 2000;Wartenburger et al, 2004). Consistently, type 2 word order sentences (which included passives) only showed a trend for correlation with the same left frontal region that correlated significantly with type 3 multiclausal relatives.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Anatomical Correlates of Sentence Comprehension and Verbal Working Memory in Neurodegenerative Disease

Amici¹,

Brambati²,

Wilkins³

et al. 2007

Journal of Neuroscience

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This study investigates whether sentence comprehension and nonsyntactic verbal working memory (vWM) are sustained by the same or by different neural systems. Scores in a sentence-picture matching task and in digits backward (DB) were correlated with magnetic resonance imaging voxelwise gray matter volumes using voxel-based morphometry in 58 patients with neurodegenerative diseases. Results showed that overall sentence comprehension scores, regardless of grammatical structure, correlated with gray matter volumes in the left temporoparietal region, whereas DB scores correlated with dorsolateral prefrontal and inferior parietal volumes. Comprehension of multiclausal relative sentences (type 3) significantly correlated with voxels in the dorsal portion of the left inferior and middle frontal gyri. When DB and multiclausal relative sentences were directly compared, they showed overlapping neural substrates in the dorsolateral left frontal region, supporting a single source of vWM for syntactic and nonsyntactic tasks. Within this large area of common involvement, a small portion of pars triangularis showed an independent effect of multiclausal sentences, whereas a region in the middle frontal gyrus showed greater correlation with DB. This study reconciles two opposing views, which hold that sentence comprehension and vWM rely on either the same or different anatomical resources.

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“…For example, experimenters have manipulated the relative syntactic complexity of sentences. Compared to simple sentences, syntactically complex sentences are thought to make greater demands on resources such as working memory and transformational analysis of misplaced syntactic fragments (Wartenburger et al, 2004). Given that the number of words was controlled in these studies, however, the relative amount of low-level constituent parsing should be fairly equivalent across conditions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Syntactic and Semantic Modulation of Neural Activity during Auditory Sentence Comprehension

Humphries

Binder²,

Medler³

et al. 2006

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

386

329

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In previous functional neuroimaging studies, left anterior temporal and temporal-parietal areas responded more strongly to sentences than to randomly ordered lists of words. The smaller response for word lists could be explained by either (1) less activation of syntactic processes due to the absence of syntactic structure in the random word lists or (2) less activation of semantic processes resulting from failure to combine the content words into a global meaning. To test these two explanations, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging study in which word order and combinatorial word meaning were independently manipulated during auditory comprehension. Subjects heard six different stimuli: normal sentences, semantically incongruent sentences in which content words were randomly replaced with other content words, pseudoword sentences, and versions of these three sentence types in which word order was randomized to remove syntactic structure. Effects of syntactic structure (greater activation to sentences than to word lists) were observed in the left anterior superior temporal sulcus and left angular gyrus. Semantic effects (greater activation to semantically congruent stimuli than either incongruent or pseudoword stimuli) were seen in widespread, bilateral temporal lobe areas and the angular gyrus. Of the two regions that responded to syntactic structure, the angular gyrus showed a greater response to semantic structure, suggesting that reduced activation for word lists in this area is related to a disruption in semantic processing. The anterior temporal lobe, on the other hand, was relatively insensitive to manipulations of semantic structure, suggesting that syntactic information plays a greater role in driving activation in this area.

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Neural correlates of syntactic transformations

Cited by 39 publications

References 53 publications

A Functional Neuroimaging Investigation of the Roles of Structural Complexity and Task-Demand During Auditory Sentence Processing

A Functional Neuroimaging Investigation of the Roles of Structural Complexity and Task-Demand During Auditory Sentence Processing

Anatomical Correlates of Sentence Comprehension and Verbal Working Memory in Neurodegenerative Disease

Syntactic and Semantic Modulation of Neural Activity during Auditory Sentence Comprehension

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