scholarly journals Co-localization of Stroop and Syntactic Ambiguity Resolution in Broca's Area: Implications for the Neural Basis of Sentence Processing

2009 ◽  
Vol 21 (12) ◽  
pp. 2434-2444 ◽  
Author(s):  
David January ◽  
John C. Trueswell ◽  
Sharon L. Thompson-Schill
Keyword(s):  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Syntactic Ambiguity ◽  
Broca’S Area ◽  
Broca's Area ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Control Processes

For over a century, a link between left prefrontal cortex and language processing has been accepted, yet the precise characterization of this link remains elusive. Recent advances in both the study of sentence processing and the neuroscientific study of frontal lobe function suggest an intriguing possibility: The demands to resolve competition between incompatible characterizations of a linguistic stimulus may recruit top–down cognitive control processes mediated by prefrontal cortex. We use functional magnetic resonance imaging to test the hypothesis that individuals use shared prefrontal neural circuitry during two very different tasks—color identification under Stroop conflict and sentence comprehension under conditions of syntactic ambiguity—both of which putatively rely on cognitive control processes. We report the first demonstration of within-subject overlap in neural responses to syntactic and nonsyntactic conflict. These findings serve to clarify the role of Broca's area in, and the neural and psychological organization of, the language processing system.

scholarly journals Some Regions within Broca's Area Do Respond More Strongly to Sentences than to Linguistically Degraded Stimuli: A Comment on Rogalsky and Hickok ()

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (10) ◽  
pp. 2632-2635 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evelina Fedorenko ◽  
Nancy Kanwisher
Keyword(s):  
Random Effects ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Broca’S Area ◽  
Broca's Area ◽  
Review Of The Literature

On the basis of their review of the literature, Rogalsky and Hickok [Rogalsky, C., & Hickok, G. The role of Broca's area in sentence comprehension. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23, 1664–1680, 2011] conclude that there is currently no strong evidence for the existence of “sentence-specific processing regions within Broca's area” (p. 1664). Their argument is based, in part, on the observation that many previous studies have failed to detect an effect in the left inferior frontal regions for contrasts between sentences and linguistically degraded control conditions (e.g., lists of unconnected words, lists of nonwords, or acoustically degraded sentence stimuli). Our data largely replicate this lack of activation in inferior frontal regions when traditional random-effects group analyses are conducted but crucially show robust activations in the same data for the same contrasts in almost every subject individually. Thus, it is the use of group analyses in studies of language processing, not the idea that sentences robustly activate frontal regions, that needs to be reconsidered. This reconsideration has important methodological and theoretical implications.

scholarly journals The neurobiology of agrammatic sentence comprehension: a lesion study

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corianne Rogalsky ◽  
Arianna N. LaCroix ◽  
Kuan-Hua Chen ◽  
Steven W. Anderson ◽  
Hanna Damasio ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Lobe ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
Matching Task ◽  
Broca’S Area ◽  
Broca's Area ◽  
Cognitive Demands ◽  
Lesion Symptom Mapping

AbstractBroca’s area has long been implicated in sentence comprehension. Damage to this region is thought to be the central source of “agrammatic comprehension” in which performance is substantially worse (and near chance) on sentences with noncanonical word orders compared to canonical word order sentences (in English). This claim is supported by functional neuroimaging studies demonstrating greater activation in Broca’s area for noncanonical versus canonical sentences. However, functional neuroimaging studies also have frequently implicated the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) in sentence processing more broadly, and recent lesion-symptom mapping studies have implicated the ATL and mid temporal regions in agrammatic comprehension. The present study investigates these seemingly conflicting findings in 66 left hemisphere patients with chronic focal cerebral damage. Patients completed two sentence comprehension measures, sentence-picture matching and plausibility judgments. Patients with damage including Broca’s area (but excluding the temporal lobe; n=11) on average did not exhibit the expected agrammatic comprehension pattern, e.g. their performance was > 80% on noncanonical sentences in the sentence-picture matching task. Patients with ATL damage (n=18) also did not exhibit an agrammatic comprehension pattern. Across our entire patient sample, the lesions of patients with agrammatic comprehension patterns in either task had maximal overlap in posterior superior temporal and inferior parietal regions. Using voxel-based lesion symptom mapping (VLSM), we find that lower performances on canonical and noncanonical sentences in each task are both associated with damage to a large left superior temporal-inferior parietal network including portions of the ATL, but not Broca’s area. Notably however, response bias in plausibility judgments was significantly associated with damage to inferior frontal cortex, including gray and white matter in Broca’s area, suggesting that the contribution of Broca’s area to sentence comprehension may be related to task-related cognitive demands.

scholarly journals Neural Correlates of Syntactic Ambiguity in Sentence Comprehension for Low and High Span Readers

2004 ◽  
Vol 16 (9) ◽  
pp. 1562-1575 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian J. Fiebach ◽  
Sandra H. Vos ◽  
Angela D. Friederici
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Memory Span ◽  
Working Memory Capacity ◽  
Memory Capacity ◽  
Syntactic Ambiguity ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Processing Demands ◽  
Superior Portion

Syntactically ambiguous sentences have been found to be difficult to process, in particular, for individuals with low working memory capacity. The current study used fMRI to investigate the neural basis of this effect in the processing of written sentences. Participants with high and low working memory capacity read sentences with either a short or long region of temporary syntactic ambiguity while being scanned. A distributed left-dominant network in the peri-sylvian region was identified to support sentence processing in the critical region of the sentence. Within this network, only the superior portion of Broca's area (BA 44) and a parietal region showed an activation increase as a function of the length of the syntactically ambiguous region in the sentence. Furthermore, it was only the BA 44 region that exhibited an interaction of working memory span, length of the syntactic ambiguity, and sentence complexity. In this area, the activation increase for syntactically more complex sentences became only significant under longer regions of ambiguity, and for low span readers only. This finding suggests that neural activity in BA 44 increases during sentence comprehension when processing demands increase, be it due to syntactic processing demands or by an interaction with the individually available working memory capacity.

scholarly journals Cognitive control and parsing: Reexamining the role of Broca’s area in sentence comprehension

2005 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jared M. Novick ◽  
John C. Trueswell ◽  
Sharon L. Thompson-Schill
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Broca’S Area ◽  
Broca's Area

scholarly journals The Neurobiology of Agrammatic Sentence Comprehension: A Lesion Study

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 234-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corianne Rogalsky ◽  
Arianna N. LaCroix ◽  
Kuan-Hua Chen ◽  
Steven W. Anderson ◽  
Hanna Damasio ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Lobe ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Functional Neuroimaging ◽  
Matching Task ◽  
Broca’S Area ◽  
Broca's Area ◽  
Cognitive Demands ◽  
Lesion Symptom Mapping

Broca's area has long been implicated in sentence comprehension. Damage to this region is thought to be the central source of “agrammatic comprehension” in which performance is substantially worse (and near chance) on sentences with noncanonical word orders compared with canonical word order sentences (in English). This claim is supported by functional neuroimaging studies demonstrating greater activation in Broca's area for noncanonical versus canonical sentences. However, functional neuroimaging studies also have frequently implicated the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) in sentence processing more broadly, and recent lesion–symptom mapping studies have implicated the ATL and mid temporal regions in agrammatic comprehension. This study investigates these seemingly conflicting findings in 66 left-hemisphere patients with chronic focal cerebral damage. Patients completed two sentence comprehension measures, sentence–picture matching and plausibility judgments. Patients with damage including Broca's area (but excluding the temporal lobe; n = 11) on average did not exhibit the expected agrammatic comprehension pattern—for example, their performance was >80% on noncanonical sentences in the sentence–picture matching task. Patients with ATL damage ( n = 18) also did not exhibit an agrammatic comprehension pattern. Across our entire patient sample, the lesions of patients with agrammatic comprehension patterns in either task had maximal overlap in posterior superior temporal and inferior parietal regions. Using voxel-based lesion–symptom mapping, we find that lower performances on canonical and noncanonical sentences in each task are both associated with damage to a large left superior temporal–inferior parietal network including portions of the ATL, but not Broca's area. Notably, however, response bias in plausibility judgments was significantly associated with damage to inferior frontal cortex, including gray and white matter in Broca's area, suggesting that the contribution of Broca's area to sentence comprehension may be related to task-related cognitive demands.

Broca’s Area and Language Processing: Evidence for the Cognitive Control Connection

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (10) ◽  
pp. 906-924 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jared M. Novick ◽  
John C. Trueswell ◽  
Sharon L. Thompson-Schill
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Broca’S Area ◽  
Broca's Area

The Role of Broca's Area in Sentence Comprehension

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (7) ◽  
pp. 1664-1680 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corianne Rogalsky ◽  
Gregory Hickok
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Short Term Memory ◽  
Functional Organization ◽  
Verbal Working Memory ◽  
General Function ◽  
Broca’S Area ◽  
Broca's Area

The role of Broca's area in sentence processing has been debated for the last 30 years. A central and still unresolved issue is whether Broca's area plays a specific role in some aspect of syntactic processing (e.g., syntactic movement, hierarchical structure building) or whether it serves a more general function on which sentence processing relies (e.g., working memory). This review examines the functional organization of Broca's area in regard to its contributions to sentence comprehension, verbal working memory, and other multimodal cognitive processes. We suggest that the data are consistent with the view that at least a portion of the contribution of Broca's area to sentence comprehension can be attributed to its role as a phonological short-term memory resource. Furthermore, our review leads us to conclude that there is no compelling evidence that there are sentence-specific processing regions within Broca's area.

scholarly journals The Neural Basis of Reversible Sentence Comprehension: Evidence from Voxel-based Lesion Symptom Mapping in Aphasia

2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 212-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malathi Thothathiri ◽  
Daniel Y. Kimberg ◽  
Myrna F. Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Parietal Cortex ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Broca's Area ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Phonological Working Memory ◽  
Large Group ◽  
Complex Sentences ◽  
Lesion Symptom Mapping

We explored the neural basis of reversible sentence comprehension in a large group of aphasic patients (n = 79). Voxel-based lesion symptom mapping revealed a significant association between damage in temporo-parietal cortex and impaired sentence comprehension. This association remained after we controlled for phonological working memory. We hypothesize that this region plays an important role in the thematic or what–where processing of sentences. In contrast, we detected weak or no association between reversible sentence comprehension and the ventrolateral pFC, which includes Broca's area, even for syntactically complex sentences. This casts doubt on theories that presuppose a critical role for this region in syntactic computations.

The Structural Language Network

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela D. Friederici ◽  
Noam Chomsky
Keyword(s):  
White Matter ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Information Transfer ◽  
Right Hemisphere ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Fiber Tracts ◽  
White Matter Fiber Tracts ◽  
The Right

An adequate description of the neural basis of language processing must consider the entire network both with respect to its structural white matter connections and the functional connectivities between the different brain regions as the information has to be sent between different language-related regions distributed across the temporal and frontal cortex. This chapter discusses the white matter fiber bundles that connect the language-relevant regions. The chapter is broken into three sections. In the first, we look at the white matter fiber tracts connecting the language-relevant regions in the frontal and temporal cortices; in the second, the ventral and dorsal pathways in the right hemisphere that connect temporal and frontal regions; and finally in the third, the two syntax-relevant and (at least) one semantic-relevant neuroanatomically-defined networks that sentence processing is based on. From this discussion, it becomes clear that online language processing requires information transfer via the long-range white matter fiber pathways that connect the language-relevant brain regions within each hemisphere and between hemispheres.

The Modularity of Sentence Processing Reconsidered

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fernanda Ferreira ◽  
James Nye
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Experimental Investigations ◽  
Modular Architecture ◽  
New Findings ◽  
Modular Architectures ◽  
Processing Module ◽  
Almost All

Today, the modular view of sentence processing is unpopular, but the arguments against modularity are not as strong as this apparent consensus would suggest. Almost all experimental investigations of modularity have focused on properties pertaining to information encapsulation, and most of those studies have evaluated just one specific modular architecture. A review of these studies of sentence comprehension suggests that the evidence against information encapsulation is really evidence against that one architecture only, and a whole range of other possible modular architectures remain untested. Although psycholinguistic work has largely ignored the modularity claims relating to shallow outputs, new findings from studies to test “good enough” language processing suggest that the output of the language processing module can be characterized as shallow or minimal. Perhaps, then, the modularity hypothesis was prematurely rejected. Evidence for shallow outputs provides intriguing new support for the idea that sentence processing is indeed modular.

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