The time-course and spatial distribution of brain activity associated with sentence processing
The time-course and spatial distribution of brain activity associated with sentence processing
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DOI：
10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.01.030
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发表时间：
2012-04-02
期刊：
影响因子：
5.7
通讯作者：
Pylkkaenen, Liina
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Brennan, Jonathan;Pylkkaenen, Liina
句子理解涉及到一系列高度相关的过程，包括句法分析、语义合成和语用推理。在神经影像学中，检查句子处理的大脑基础的主要范式是比较句子与非结构化单词列表引起的大脑活动。这些研究通常发现前颞叶（aTL）活动增加对句子的影响。再加上神经心理学的数据，这些研究结果激发了假设，即aTL是从事句子水平的组合。然而，语言理解过程中的组合处理发生在几十和几百毫秒内，即，在时间尺度上比血流动力学测量的时间分辨率快得多。在这里，我们研究了时间过程的脑磁图（MEG），以更好地了解激活的时间分布在这个共同的范例，并测试组合假说的一个关键预测：因为句子是递增解释，一个字一个字，活动与基本的语言组合应该是时间锁定的单词呈现。我们的研究结果表明，增加前颞活动的句子相比，单词列表开始约250毫秒后，单词发病。我们还观察到其他大脑区域网络的激活增加，延伸到后颞区，下额叶和腹内侧区。这些发现证实了组合假说的一个关键预测，并进一步阐明了大脑中时间级计算的时空特征。(c)2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Sentence comprehension involves a host of highly interrelated processes, including syntactic parsing, semantic composition, and pragmatic inferencing. In neuroimaging, a primary paradigm for examining the brain bases of sentence processing has been to compare brain activity elicited by sentences versus unstructured lists of words. These studies commonly find an effect of increased activity for sentences in the anterior temporal lobes (aTL). Together with neuropsychological data, these findings have motivated the hypothesis that the aTL is engaged in sentence level combinatorics. Combinatoric processing during language comprehension, however, occurs within tens and hundreds of milliseconds, i.e., at a time-scale much faster than the temporal resolution of hemodynamic measures. Here, we examined the time-course of sentence-level processing using magnetoencephalography (MEG) to better understand the temporal profile of activation in this common paradigm and to test a key prediction of the combinatoric hypothesis: because sentences are interpreted incrementally, word-by-word, activity associated with basic linguistic combinatorics should be time-locked to word-presentation. Our results reveal increased anterior temporal activity for sentences compared to word lists beginning approximately 250 ms after word onset. We also observed increased activation in a network of other brain areas, extending across posterior temporal, inferior frontal, and ventral medial areas. These findings confirm a key prediction of the combinatoric hypothesis for the all, and further elucidate the spatio-temporal characteristics of sentence-level computations in the brain. (c) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.