The brain circuitry of syntactic comprehension

Kaan, Edith; Swaab, Tamara Y.

doi:10.1016/s1364-6613(02)01947-2

Cited by 331 publications

(261 citation statements)

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“…Indeed, the activation described falls in a (medial) region of the inferior frontal gyrus, very different from the (lateral) sections typically implicated in syntactic tasks (e.g. Bornkessel et al, 2005;Dapretto andBookheimer, 1999, c.f., Grodzinsky andKaan and Swaab, 2002;Price, 2000). The medial region reported by Prado et al (2010a), often referred to as the "deep frontal operculum" (Anwander et al, 2007), has been proposed to serve articulatory planning (Price, 2000).…”

Section: Deduction As a Language Based Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

Logic, language and the brain

Monti

Osherson

2012

Brain Research

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What is the role of language in human cognition? Within the domain of deductive reasoning, the issue has been the focus of numerous investigations without the emergence of a consensus view. Here we consider some of the reasons why neuroimaging studies of deductive reasoning have generated mixed results. We then review recent evidence suggesting that the role of language in deductive reasoning is confined to an initial stage in which verbally presented information is encoded as non-verbal representations. These representations are then manipulated by mental operations that are not based on the neural mechanisms of natural language.

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Section: Deduction As a Language Based Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

Logic, language and the brain

Monti

Osherson

2012

Brain Research

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“…Specifically, we were interested in the nature of the cortical systems that compute syntactic representations during online language comprehension. Three regions have traditionally been identified as candidates for syntactic processing (Fedorenko et al, 2012;Friederici and Kotz, 2003;Grodzinsky and Friederici, 2006;Kaan and Swaab, 2002). Historically, Broca's area or left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) has been most associated with syntax (Ben-Shachar et al, 2003;Ben-Shachar et al, 2004;Bornkessel-Schlesewsky et al, 2009;Caplan et al, 2008;Caplan et al, 2000;Carramazza and Zurif, 1976;Dapretto and Bookheimer, 1999;Embick et al, 2000;Friederici et al, 2006;Grodzinsky, 2001;Just et al, 1996;Santi and Grodzinsky, 2007;Stromswold et al, 1996).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language structure in the brain: A fixation-related fMRI study of syntactic surprisal in reading

et al. 2016

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How is syntactic analysis implemented by the human brain during language comprehension? The current study combined methods from computational linguistics, eyetracking, and fMRI to address this question. Subjects read passages of text presented as paragraphs while their eye movements were recorded in an MRI scanner. We parsed the text using a probabilistic context-free grammar to isolate syntactic difficulty. Syntactic difficulty was quantified as syntactic surprisal, which is related to the expectedness of a given word's syntactic category given its preceding context. We compared words with high and low syntactic surprisal values that were equated for length, frequency, and lexical surprisal, and used fixation-related (FIRE) fMRI to measure neural activity associated with syntactic surprisal for each fixated word. We observed greater neural activity for high than low syntactic surprisal in two predicted cortical regions previously identified with syntax: left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and less robustly, left anterior superior temporal lobe (ATL). These results support the hypothesis that left IFG and ATL play a central role in syntactic analysis during language comprehension. More generally, the results suggest a broader cortical network associated with syntactic prediction that includes increased activity in bilateral IFG and insula, as well as fusiform and right lingual gyri.© 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords:Language Syntax Surprisal Reading Eye movements fMRI IntroductionA complete theory of the human brain must include a description of the neural networks responsible for language processing. Comprehension of connected sentences requires the ability to retrieve words from the lexicon and relate those words to each other, as the input is encountered in real time. The system for creating these groupings is known as syntax, and is generally thought of as a set of computations specifying syntactic categories such as noun and verb, and stating how those categories combine into increasingly larger constituents such as noun phrases, verb phrases, and clauses. The constituent structure of a sentence is the frame on which interpretations are built; the same words will have radically different meanings depending on that structure (e.g., the dog bit the man vs. the man bit the dog). Thus, the human ability to understand language is based both on lexical knowledge and syntactic computations.In this study, we focused on understanding how the human brain implements the syntactic component of the human language faculty. Specifically, we were interested in the nature of the cortical systems that compute syntactic representations during online language comprehension. Three regions have traditionally been identified as candidates for syntactic processing (Fedorenko et al., 2012;Friederici and Kotz, 2003;Grodzinsky and Friederici, 2006;Kaan and Swaab, 2002). Historically, Broca's area or left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) has been most associated with syntax (Ben-Shachar et al., 2003;Ben-Shachar et al., 2004;...

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“…In other words, although the different ERP effects are indicative of the engagement of at least partially non-overlapping neural systems, they do not tell us which exact cortical networks are involved in the establishing of reference, or what their relationship is to the networks known to be involved in the processing of meaning. In the last decade, language comprehension researchers have begun to use functional neuroimaging techniques (e.g., fMRI) to unravel the neuronal infrastructure of semantic, syntactic and phonological processing (e.g., Bookheimer, 2002;Friederici, 2002;Kaan and Swaab, 2002;Stowe et al, 2005, for reviews). However, with the exception of a few studies focusing on cohesion/coherence processing in discourse comprehension (Ferstl and von Cramon, 2001;Robertson et al, 2000), there has been no functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) work on the neural substrate for referential processing.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…First, referential ambiguity may require the language system to, from the ambiguous pronoun and onwards, actively maintain two candidate fillers for an unresolved single referential slot in working memory (e.g., Gibson, 1998). In such a scenario, the brain signature of referential ambiguity may resemble that of increased working memory load, eliciting increased activity in the LIFG (BA 44/45/47;Fletcher and Henson, 2001;Kaan and Swaab, 2002;Smith and Jonides, 1999). Second, in a recent review, Novick et al (2005) posit a similar prediction for LIFG involvement in resolving referential ambiguity, albeit for different reasons.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On sense and reference: Examining the functional neuroanatomy of referential processing

2007

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In an event-related fMRI study, we examined the cortical networks involved in establishing reference during language comprehension. We compared BOLD responses to sentences containing referentially ambiguous pronouns (e.g., "Ronald told Frank that he…"), referentially failing pronouns (e.g., "Rose told Emily that he…") or coherent pronouns. Referential ambiguity selectively recruited medial prefrontal regions, suggesting that readers engaged in problemsolving to select a unique referent from the discourse model. Referential failure elicited activation increases in brain regions associated with morpho-syntactic processing, and, for those readers who took failing pronouns to refer to unmentioned entities, additional regions associated with elaborative inferencing were observed. The networks activated by these two referential problems did not overlap with the network activated by a standard semantic anomaly. Instead, we observed a double dissociation, in that the systems activated by semantic anomaly are deactivated by referential ambiguity, and vice versa. This inverse coupling may reflect the dynamic recruitment of semantic and episodic processing to resolve semantically or referentially problematic situations. More generally, our findings suggest that neurocognitive accounts of language comprehension need to address not just how we parse a sentence and combine individual word meanings, but also how we determine who's who and what's what during language comprehension.

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The brain circuitry of syntactic comprehension

Cited by 331 publications

References 51 publications

Logic, language and the brain

Logic, language and the brain

Language structure in the brain: A fixation-related fMRI study of syntactic surprisal in reading

On sense and reference: Examining the functional neuroanatomy of referential processing

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