Language Development and the Ontogeny of the Dorsal Pathway

In the absence of clear phylogenetic data on the neurobiological basis of the evolution of language, comparative studies across species and across ontogenetic stages within humans may inform us about the possible neural prerequisites of language. In the adult human brain, language-relevant regions located in the frontal and temporal cortex are connected via different fiber tracts: ventral and dorsal pathways. Ontogenetically, it has been shown that newborns display an adult-like ventral pathway at birth. The dorsal pathway, however, seems to display two subparts which mature at different rates: one part, connecting the temporal cortex to the premotor cortex, is present at birth, whereas the other part, connecting the temporal cortex to Broca’s area, develops much later and is still not fully matured at the age of seven. At this age, typically developing children still have problems in processing syntactically complex sentences. We therefore suggest that the mastery of complex syntax, which is at the core of human language, crucially depends on the full maturation of the fiber connection between the temporal cortex and Broca’s area

Wh-movement vs. scrambling: The brain makes a difference

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Mathematical Logic in the Human Brain: Syntax

Theory predicts a close structural relation of formal languages with natural languages. Both share the aspect of an underlying grammar which either generates (hierarchically) structured expressions or allows us to decide whether a sentence is syntactically correct or not. The advantage of rule-based communication is commonly believed to be its efficiency and effectiveness. A particularly important class of formal languages are those underlying the mathematical syntax. Here we provide brain-imaging evidence that the syntactic processing of abstract mathematical formulae, written in a first order language, is, indeed efficient and effective as a rule-based generation and decision process. However, it is remarkable, that the neural network involved, consisting of intraparietal and prefrontal regions, only involves Broca's area in a surprisingly selective way. This seems to imply that despite structural analogies of common and current formal languages, at the neural level, mathematics and natural language are processed differently, in principal

Electrophysiology of normal and pathological language processing

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Neural correlates of music-syntactic processing in two-year old children

Music is a basic and ubiquitous socio-cognitive domain. However, our understanding of the time course of the development of music perception, particularly regarding implicit knowledge of music-syntactic regularities, remains contradictory and incomplete. Some authors assume that the acquisition of knowledge about these regularities lasts until late childhood, but there is also evidence for the presence of such knowledge in four- and five-year-olds. To explore whether such knowledge is already present in younger children, we tested whether 30-month-olds (N=62) show neurophysiological responses to music-syntactically irregular harmonies. We observed an early right anterior negativity in response to both irregular in-key and out-of-key chords. The N5, a brain response usually present in older children and adults, was not observed, indicating that processes of harmonic integration (as reflected in the N5) are still in development in this age group. In conclusion, our results indicate that 30-month-olds already have acquired implicit knowledge of complex harmonic music-syntactic regularities and process musical information according to this knowledge

Neuromagnetic evidence that differences in verb and noun processing are modulated by the presence of a syntactic context

We investigated the hypothesis that differences in the processing of verbs and nouns are modulated by the presence or absence of a syntactic context. When presented in isolation, no word category differences were observed over the left hemisphere. Verbs elicited slightly stronger magnetic fields than nouns over the right hemisphere. When presented in a minimal syntactic context, nouns elicited stronger fields than verbs over left posterior temporal regions (as indicated by root mean square signals and brain surface current density maps). Analysis of BSCD maps also indicated that verbs in context elicit stronger responses than nouns over left anterior regions

Comprehension of action sequences : The case of paper, scissors, rock

Bach, P., Knoblich, G., Friederici, A. D., & Prinz, W. (2001). Comprehension of action sequences: The case of paper, scissors, rock. In K. Stenning & J. D. Moore (Ed.), Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (S. 39-44). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Publisher PD