Sustained Activity Mechanisms for Neurally Encoding Linguistic Structure

该项目将研究人脑如何实现理解语言所必需的短期记忆表征。特别是，拟议的实验将通过记录成年人理解结构化句子的大脑活动，来研究神经活动的持续增加如何有助于语言理解。通过这样做，这项工作将谈论关于短期记忆中持续的神经活动在更广泛的认知中的作用的问题，这是目前该领域许多争论的主题。这里提出的基础研究最终将为更好地理解失语症和精神分裂症等神经认知障碍中与工作记忆问题相关的语言缺陷铺平道路，并为评估接受第一语言和第二语言习得的人群的语言理解能力提供更精细的神经测量方法。该项目还将在一个技术性和高度跨学科的研究领域为学生提供大量培训机会，该领域涉及语言学、认知心理学、计算语言学和认知神经科学。当前项目的一个关键方法要素是使用多模式神经成像，它集成了一系列技术(脑电图学、脑磁图学和功能磁共振成像)的数据，以便准确地识别相关的神经活动在时间和脑空间上。这些技术被用来评估先前的提议，即在几个大脑区域(左下额叶皮质和左后颞叶皮质)持续活动是允许人类在语言理解过程中代表句子不同部分之间的关系的原因。重要的是，该项目建立在语言学和计算语言学的基础性工作基础上，以设计能够有效探索关于这些神经机制的不同假设的结构化语言材料。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The project will examine how the human brain implements the short-term memory representations necessary for comprehending language. In particular, the proposed experiments will investigate how sustained increases in neural activity contribute to language understanding, by recording brain activity as adults comprehend structured sentences. In so doing, this work will speak to questions about the role of sustained neural activity in short-term memory in cognition more broadly, which is currently the subject of much debate in the field. The basic research proposed here will ultimately pave the way for a better understanding of the language deficits associated with working memory problems in neurocognitive disorders such as aphasia and schizophrenia, as well as providing more fine-grained neural measures for evaluating language comprehension abilities in populations undergoing first and second language acquisition. The project will also provide numerous training opportunities for students in a technical and highly interdisciplinary research area that draws upon the fields of linguistics, cognitive psychology, computational linguistics, and cognitive neuroscience. A key methodological element of the current project is the use of multimodal neuroimaging, which integrates data from a range of techniques (electroencephalography, magnetoencephalography, and functional MRI) in order to precisely identify relevant neural activity both in time and in brain space. These techniques are used to evaluate prior proposals that sustained activity in several brain regions (left inferior frontal cortex and left posterior temporal cortex) is what allows humans to represent relations between different parts of a sentence during language comprehension. Critically, the project builds on foundational work from linguistics and computational linguistics to devise structured language materials that can effectively probe different hypotheses about these neural mechanisms.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.