Syntactic processing is distributed across the language system

Blank, Idan; Balewski, Zuzanna; Mahowald, Kyle; Fedorenko, Evelina

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.11.069

Cited by 168 publications

(184 citation statements)

References 180 publications

(249 reference statements)

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“…The recent data [46] provide evidence that sensitivity to syntactic complexity is widespread across the language system, contrary to many previous neuroimaging studies that reported only a few, localized foci of syntactic complexity effects.…”

Section: Neurophysiological Mechanisms Underlying Language Developmentcontrasting

confidence: 99%

Ontogenetic Development of Neurophysiological Mechanisms Underlying Language Processing

Guillemard¹,

Tsitseroshin²,

Shepovalnikov³

et al. 2018

Evolutionary Physiology and Biochemistry - Advances and Perspectives

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During the last 20 years, new data on the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying different types of cognitive activity, especially speech and its ontogenetic formation, were obtained in the Laboratory of Children's Neurophysiology headed by Prof. M.N. Tsitseroshin. Using the analysis of the spatial-temporal structure of regional interactions of cortical bioelectric potentials (so-called functional connectivity), we investigated how specific language levels, such as phonology, grammar, and semantics, are represented in the brain. The data obtained in children vs. adults indicate that the speech perception and production require joint and extremely coordinated activities of both hemispheres, along with the obligatory and differentiated involvement of "classic" speech centers in the left hemisphere, especially Wernicke's area. Another line of our research is to explore the differences, which arise during verbal processing in adults and children with impaired vs. non-impaired speech, particularly with alalia, dysarthria and stuttering, using behavioral and EEG data. Our data obtained in children vs. adults allow assessing the degree of maturity in the organization of the central processes of maintaining the studied types of verbal activity in children of different ages. These data allow expanding modern concepts about the brain mechanisms of verbal activity in children in the norm and pathology.

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Section: Neurophysiological Mechanisms Underlying Language Developmentcontrasting

confidence: 99%

Ontogenetic Development of Neurophysiological Mechanisms Underlying Language Processing

Guillemard¹,

Tsitseroshin²,

Shepovalnikov³

et al. 2018

Evolutionary Physiology and Biochemistry - Advances and Perspectives

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“…However, it accords with fMRI work that observes sensitivity to lexical and syntactic processing throughout the language network (e.g., refs. 28,51,53,61,62), and evidence that language regions form a highly integrated functional system (e.g., ref. 63).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural correlate of the construction of sentence meaning

Fedorenko

Scott

Brunner

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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180

211

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The neural processes that underlie your ability to read and understand this sentence are unknown. Sentence comprehension occurs very rapidly, and can only be understood at a mechanistic level by discovering the precise sequence of underlying computational and neural events. However, we have no continuous and online neural measure of sentence processing with high spatial and temporal resolution. Here we report just such a measure: intracranial recordings from the surface of the human brain show that neural activity, indexed by γ-power, increases monotonically over the course of a sentence as people read it. This steady increase in activity is absent when people read and remember nonword-lists, despite the higher cognitive demand entailed, ruling out accounts in terms of generic attention, working memory, and cognitive load. Response increases are lower for sentence structure without meaning ("Jabberwocky" sentences) and word meaning without sentence structure (word-lists), showing that this effect is not explained by responses to syntax or word meaning alone. Instead, the full effect is found only for sentences, implicating compositional processes of sentence understanding, a striking and unique feature of human language not shared with animal communication systems. This work opens up new avenues for investigating the sequence of neural events that underlie the construction of linguistic meaning.ow does a sequence of sounds emerging from one person's mouth create a complex meaning in another person's mind? Although we have long known where language is processed in the brain (1-3), we still know almost nothing about how neural circuits extract and represent the meaning of a sentence. A powerful method for addressing this question is intracranial recording of neural activity directly from the cortical surface in neurosurgery patients (i.e., electrocorticography or ECoG) (4, 5). Although opportunities for ECoG data collection are rare, determined by clinical-not scientific-priorities, they nonetheless offer an unparalleled combination of spatial and temporal resolution, and further provide direct measures of actual neural activity, rather than indirect measures via blood flow (as in PET, fMRI, and near infrared spectroscopy/optical imaging). ECoG data are particularly valuable for the study of uniquely human functions like language, where animal models are inadequate. Here we used ECoG to identify the neural events that occur online as the meaning of a sentence is extracted and represented.Prior intracranial recording studies of language have largely focused on speech perception and production (e.g., refs. 6-11) and word-level processes (e.g., refs. 12-26). However, the most distinctive feature of human language is its compositionality: the ability to create and understand complex meanings from novel combinations of words structured into phrases and sentences (27). As a first step toward understanding the neural basis of sentence comprehension, we recorded intracranial responses while participants read sentences and...

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“…For example, recent fMRI work has been able to extricate overlapping sets of neural activity in the auditory cortex to identify distinct responses to either speech or music (Norman-Haignere et al, 2015). Furthermore, correlations between resting-state fMRI and gene expression have also recently been uncovered (Hawrylycz et al, 2015; Richiardi et al, 2015; Wang et al, 2015), but future studies that combine such approaches with speech-related task-based imaging, including investigations beyond traditional areas of speech and language (Blank et al, 2015) should provide insights into genomic correlates of speech and a deeper understanding of speech-related brain networks.…”

Section: Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Insights into the Neural and Genetic Basis of Vocal Communication

Konopka

Roberts

2016

Cell

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The use of vocalizations to communicate information and elaborate social bonds is an adaptation seen in many vertebrate species. Human speech is an extreme version of this pervasive form of communication. Unlike the vocalizations exhibited by the majority of land vertebrates, speech is a learned behavior requiring early sensory exposure and auditory feedback for its development and maintenance. Studies in humans and a small number of other species have provided insights into the neural and genetic basis for learned vocal communication and are helping to delineate the roles of brain circuits across the cortex, basal ganglia and cerebellum in generating vocal behaviors. This Review provides an outline of the current knowledge about these circuits, the genes implicated in vocal communication, and a perspective on future research directions in this field.

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Syntactic processing is distributed across the language system

Cited by 168 publications

References 180 publications

Ontogenetic Development of Neurophysiological Mechanisms Underlying Language Processing

Ontogenetic Development of Neurophysiological Mechanisms Underlying Language Processing

Neural correlate of the construction of sentence meaning

Insights into the Neural and Genetic Basis of Vocal Communication

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