Cortical tracking of hierarchical linguistic structures in connected speech.
Cortical tracking of hierarchical linguistic structures in connected speech.
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DOI：
10.1038/nn.4186
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发表时间：
2016-01
影响因子：
25
通讯作者：
Poeppel D
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Ding N;Melloni L;Zhang H;Tian X;Poeppel D
人类语言最关键的属性是它的无界组合性质：基于语法系统，较小的元素可以组合成较大的结构，从而产生语言单位的层次结构，例如词、短语和句子。然而，对这类结构的心理分析和表征给言语理解带来了挑战。在言语中，层级语言结构没有由声音线索明确界定的边界，因此必须在理解过程中内部递增地构建。在这里，我们证明了在听连通语音的过程中，不同时间尺度的皮层活动同时跟踪不同层次的抽象语言结构的时间进程，例如词、短语和句子。关键的是，对层级语言结构的神经跟踪与声学线索的编码以及输入单词的可预测性是分离的。结果表明，神经加工时间的层次性是基于语法的语言层级结构的内部构建的基础。
The most critical attribute of human language is its unbounded combinatorial nature: smaller elements can be combined into larger structures based on a grammatical system, resulting in a hierarchy of linguistic units, e.g., words, phrases, and sentences. Mentally parsing and representing such structures, however, poses challenges for speech comprehension. In speech, hierarchical linguistic structures do not have boundaries clearly defined by acoustic cues and must therefore be internally and incrementally constructed during comprehension. Here we demonstrate that during listening to connected speech, cortical activity of different time scales concurrently tracks the time course of abstract linguistic structures at different hierarchical levels, e.g. words, phrases, and sentences. Critically, the neural tracking of hierarchical linguistic structures is dissociated from the encoding of acoustic cues as well as from the predictability of incoming words. The results demonstrate that a hierarchy of neural processing timescales underlies grammar-based internal construction of hierarchical linguistic structure.