Syntactic Unification Operations Are Reflected in Oscillatory Dynamics during On-line Sentence Comprehension

Abstract

Abstract■ There is growing evidence suggesting that synchronization changes in the oscillatory neuronal dynamics in the EEG or MEG reflect the transient coupling and uncoupling of functional networks related to different aspects of language comprehension. In this work, we examine how sentence-level syntactic unification operations are reflected in the oscillatory dynamics of the MEG. Participants read sentences that were either correct, contained a word category violation, or were constituted of random word sequences devoid of syntactic structure. A time-frequency analysis of MEG power changes revealed three types of effects. The first type of effect was related to the detection of a (word category) violation in a syntactically structured sentence, and was found in the alpha and gamma frequency bands. A second type of effect was maximally sensitive to the syntactic manipulations: A linear increase in beta power across the sentence was present for correct sentences, was disrupted upon the occurrence of a word category violation, and was absent in syntactically unstructured random word sequences. We therefore relate this effect to syntactic unification operations. Thirdly, we observed a linear increase in theta power across the sentence for all syntactically structured sentences. The effects are tentatively related to the building of a working memory trace of the linguistic input. In conclusion, the data seem to suggest that syntactic unification is reflected by neuronal synchronization in the lower-beta frequency band. ■

Early Anticipation Lies behind the Speed of Response in Conversation

“…Furthermore, beta power decreases have been associated with the temporal predictability of stimulus occurrence (Alegre et al, 2003(Alegre et al, , 2006. Beta power and coherence changes have also been suggested to be related to syntactic and semantic processing (Wang et al, 2012;Weiss & Mueller, 2012;Bastiaansen et al, 2010;Weiss et al, 2005).…”

“…We focused on the dynamics of EEG oscillations, as oscillatory dynamics in the alpha and beta frequency ranges have been clearly associated with both motor and nonmotor anticipation in earlier research (Bastiaansen & Brunia, 2001;Pfurtscheller & Lopes da Silva, 1999;Pfurtscheller & Aranibar, 1977;Jasper & Penfield, 1949). Beta power and coherences changes have also been suggested to be related to syntactic and semantic processing ( Wang, Zhu, & Bastiaansen, 2012;Bastiaansen, Magyari, & Hagoort, 2010;Weiss et al, 2005) and to reflect a close relationship between language comprehension and motor functions ( Weiss & Mueller, 2012). We thus had two dependent measures, the timing of key presses and the time-frequency analysis of EEG power changes.…”

Putative mechanisms mediating tolerance for audiovisual stimulus onset asynchrony

“…For example, coherent network activity in the beta band for unscrambled visual objects is greater than that for scrambled objects (Sehatpour et al 2008). Similarly, beta power is greater for syntactically well-structured versus less structured sentences (Bastiaansen et al 2009). Most pertinently, enhanced beta power in frontal, parietal, and superior temporal cortex was reported to precede the McGurk illusion (Keil et al 2011), signifying beta's role in network interactions and the binding of AV features during speech processing.…”

“…Along with gamma activity, an increase of beta activity is related to cortical-to-cortical communication mediating feature binding in audition and vision (Bastiaansen et al 2009;Kopell et al 2000;Sehatpour et al 2008)-the recognition of an object's features as composing a whole. Beta's role in feature binding has been reported in visual and auditory domains.…”

Brain Dynamics Sustaining Rapid Rule Extraction from Speech

“…Although an increasing number of studies have recently focused on discovering the oscillatory activity behind language comprehension (Bastiaansen, Magyari, & Hagoort, 2010;Weiss et al, 2005;Hagoort, Hald, Bastiaansen, & Petersson, 2004;Weiss & Mueller, 2003;Bastiaansen, van Berkum, & Hagoort, 2002b;Rohm, Klimesch, Haider, & Doppelmayr, 2001), surprisingly, studies that investigate the brain dynamics in terms of oscillatory activity related to language acquisition (see Buiatti, Peña, & DehaeneLambertz, 2009) are lacking. In language comprehension, modulations that are associated with semantic processing with diverse results at different frequency bands have been reported (Davidson & Indefrey, 2009;Weiss & Mueller, 2003;Rohm et al, 2001).…”