Neural Mechanisms of Verb Argument Structure Processing in Agrammatic Aphasic and Healthy Age-matched Listeners

Abstract

Processing of lexical verbs involves automatic access to argument structure entries entailed within the verb's representation. Recent neuroimaging studies with young normal listeners suggest that this involves bilateral posterior perisylvian tissue, with graded activation in these regions based on argument structure complexity. The aim of the present study was to examine the neural mechanisms of verb processing using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in older normal volunteers and patients with stroke-induced agrammatic aphasia, a syndrome in which verb, as compared to noun, production often is selectively impaired, but verb comprehension in both on-line and off-line tasks is spared. Fourteen healthy listeners and five age-matched aphasic patients performed a lexical decision task, which examined verb processing by argument structure complexity, i.e., one-argument (i.e., intransitive (v1)); two-argument (i.e., transitive (v2)), and three-argument (v3) verbs. Results for the age-matched listeners largely replicated those for younger participants studied by Thompson et al. (2007): v3-v1 comparisons showed activation of the angular gyrus in both hemispheres and this same heteromodal region was activated in the left hemisphere in the (v2+v3)-v1 contrast. Similar results were derived for the agrammatic aphasic patients, however, activation was unilateral (in the right hemisphere for 3 participants) rather than bilateral likely because these patients' lesions extended to the left temporoparietal region. All performed the task with high accuracy and, despite differences in lesion site and extent, they recruited spared tissue in the same regions as healthy normals. Consistent with psycholinguistic models of sentence processing, these findings indicate that the posterior language network is engaged for processing verb argument structure and is crucial for semantic integration of argument structure information. Keywordsverb argument structure processing; verb subcategorization; agrammatic aphasia; argument structure processing in normal ageing; fMRI investigations of verb processing; phrase structure building operations

Predication Drives Verb Cortical Signatures

“…In one study (Thompson et al, 2007), they observed greater neural activity in the left supramarginal and angular gyri for transitive relative to intransitive verbs. In a follow-up study (Thompson et al, 2010) using the same task and materials, they observed similar results but this time restricted to the angular gyrus. In a different study, Meltzer-Asscher, Schuchard, den Ouden, and Thomphon (2013) observed greater neural activity in the bilateral angular and supramarginal gyri, as well as in the right posterior superior temporal gyrus (STG), the right MTG, and the right middle and superior frontal gyri for verbs that can act as transitive or intransitive versus verbs that must exclusively act as intransitive.…”

Verb use in aphasic and non-aphasic personal discourse: What is normal?

“…There is evidence from normal speakers that comprehension of a verb activates not only lexical semantics but also argument structure knowledge (Thompson, Bonakdarpour, & Fix, 2010).…”

Syntactic and Morphosyntactic Processing in Stroke-Induced and Primary Progressive Aphasia

“…Hence, affected regions of the brain can remain active during language task performance [52]. Nevertheless, in general, PPA-G and StrAg are associated with necrosed or atrophied tissue in the left frontal region, although tissue atrophy in PPA-G also may involve the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) and lesions in StrAg can include both anterior and posterior perisylvian brain regions [44,56,65]. Conversely, PPA-L and StrAn typically result from compromised tissue in the temporo-parietal region.…”