Brain regions that process case: Evidence from basque

The aim of this event-related fMRI study was to investigate the cortical networks involved in case processing, an operation that is crucial to language comprehension yet whose neural underpinnings are not well-understood. What is the relationship of these networks to those that serve other aspects of syntactic and semantic processing? Participants read Basque sentences that contained case violations, number agreement violations or semantic anomalies, or that were both syntactically and semantically correct. Case violations elicited activity increases, compared to correct control sentences, in a set of parietal regions including the posterior cingulate, the precuneus, and the left and right inferior parietal lobules. Number agreement violations also elicited activity increases in left and right inferior parietal regions, and additional activations in the left and right middle frontal gyrus. Regions-of-interest analyses showed that almost all of the clusters that were responsive to case or number agreement violations did not differentiate between these two. In contrast, the left and right anterior inferior frontal gyrus and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex were only sensitive to semantic violations. Our results suggest that whereas syntactic and semantic anomalies clearly recruit distinct neural circuits, case, and number violations recruit largely overlapping neural circuits and that the distinction between the two rests on the relative contributions of parietal and prefrontal regions, respectively. Furthermore, our results are consistent with recently reported contributions of bilateral parietal and dorsolateral brain regions to syntactic processing, pointing towards potential extensions of current neurocognitive theories of language. Hum Brain Mapp, 2012. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

Processing linguistic complexity and grammaticality in the left frontal cortex

1

Daily Eastern News: April 30, 1990

https://thekeep.eiu.edu/den_1990_apr/1020/thumbnail.jp

"And yet it moves" or why grammar overrides frequency: A reply to Kempen and Harbusch

We show that Kempen and Harbusch's (Cognition (2003) this issue) arguments against our claims cannot be upheld. On the one hand, their alternative account of our data that is based on the availability of constructions with object-experiencer verbs is not compatible with the literature on the processing of these types of sentences in German. Moreover, their allegation that we failed to conduct an accurate corpus count is simply a misreading of our paper. Insofar, the commentary in no way casts doubt on our claim that grammatical regularities override frequency during online comprehension

Grammar overrides frequency: Evidence from the online processing of flexible word order

We show that online processing difficulties induced by word order variations in German cannot be attributed to the relative infrequency of the constructions in question, but rather appear to reflect the application of grammatical principles during parsing. Event-related brain potentials revealed that dative-marked objects in the initial position of an embedded sentence do not elicit a neurophysiologically distinct response from subjects, whereas accusative-marked objects do. These differences are predictable on the basis of grammatical distinctions (i.e. underlying linguistic properties), but not on the basis of frequency information (i.e. a superficial linguistic property). We therefore conclude that the former, but not the latter, guides syntactic integration during online parsing

Contextual information modulates initial processes of syntactic integration: the role of inter- versus intrasentential predictions

The authors demonstrate that intersentential context may influence syntactic integration processes during online sentence comprehension, although this influence appears to be restricted to cases in which a contextual requirement must be fulfilled. By applying event-related brain potentials to the processing of clause-medial word order variations in German, the authors show that the local processing difficulty (a negativity from 300 to 450 ms) observed for object-initial sentences in a neutral context is also obtained in a (behaviorally) facilitating context in which the object is contextually given. By contrast, the processing pattern for a focused (questioned) initial object does not differ from that for a focused subject: both elicit a parietal positivity (280-480 ms) post-onset of the focused phrase. The authors interpret this early positivity as a general marker of focus integration, a process that appears to briefly supersede sentence-internal requirements

Beyond syntax: Language-related positivities reflect the revision of hierarchies

On the basis of an experiment using event-related brain potentials (EPRs), we argue that a characterisation of language-related positivities as necessarily syntax-related is too restrictive. Our data show that, in verb-final German clauses, the processing of a verb which disconfirms the expectations with regard to the hierarchical thematic structure of a sentence (who is doing what to whom) gives rise to an early (200-600 ms) parietal positivity. Thus, positive ERP components elicited during language processing appear to be related to operations (most often revisions) applying to hierarchically structured linguistic information in general, rather than to syntactic structure in particular

Towards a Computational Model of Actor-Based Language Comprehension

Neurophysiological data from a range of typologically diverse languages provide evidence for a cross-linguistically valid, actor-based strategy of understanding sentence-level meaning. This strategy seeks to identify the participant primarily responsible for the state of affairs (the actor) as quickly and unambiguously as possible, thus resulting in competition for the actor role when there are multiple candidates. Due to its applicability across languages with vastly different characteristics, we have proposed that the actor strategy may derive from more basic cognitive or neurobiological organizational principles, though it is also shaped by distributional properties of the linguistic input (e.g. the morphosyntactic coding strategies for actors in a given language). Here, we describe an initial computational model of the actor strategy and how it interacts with language-specific properties. Specifically, we contrast two distance metrics derived from the output of the computational model (one weighted and one unweighted) as potential measures of the degree of competition for actorhood by testing how well they predict modulations of electrophysiological activity engendered by language processing. To this end, we present an EEG study on word order processing in German and use linear mixed-effects models to assess the effect of the various distance metrics. Our results show that a weighted metric, which takes into account the weighting of an actor-identifying feature in the language under consideration outperforms an unweighted distance measure. We conclude that actor competition effects cannot be reduced to feature overlap between multiple sentence participants and thereby to the notion of similarity-based interference, which is prominent in current memory-based models of language processing. Finally, we argue that, in addition to illuminating the underlying neurocognitive mechanisms of actor competition, the present model can form the basis for a more comprehensive, neurobiologically plausible computational model of constructing sentence-level meaning

Wirkung von nächtlichen, intermittierenden, inspirationsgesteuerten Rosenduftstimuli auf die Stimmung depressiver Patientinnen

Das Ziel der vorliegenden Studie war es, die Machbarkeit eines neuen Duftstoff- Applikators zu demonstrieren und die Auswirkungen von nächtlicher, intermittierender Anwendung von Rosenduft auf die Stimmung und die Qualität von Schlaf bzw. auf das Traumverhalten bei depressiven, weiblichen Patientinnen zu untersuchen. Die Hypothesen wurden aufgestellt, dass sich die Stimmung (und zusätzlich der Schlaf) als primäres Ergebnis verbessern wird und zwar mit gesteigertem Effekt durch den spezifischen Versuchsaufbau im Vergleich zu Raumluft. In einer randomisierten, placebokontrollierten Crossover-Studie wurden siebenundzwanzig normosmische 18- bis 49-jährige Frauen untersucht, die depressiv waren. Ausschlusskriterien waren Rhinitis, Hypo- oder Anosmie. Während des Schlafes fügte ein sowohl intervallgesteuerter als auch inspirations- gesteuerter Applikator via eines Nasenschläuchleins der eingeatmeten Luft Rosenkonzentrat hinzu. Es gab drei aufeinanderfolgende Nächte von jeder Duftstoff- und Placebo- Anwendung und eine Auswaschphase. Die Patientinnen beantworteten standardisierte Fragebögen zu Stimmung/Befindlichkeit und zum Traumverhalten. Vier Patientinnen schieden aus (n = 1: noncompliance beim Ausfüllen der Fragebögen, n = 3: Intoleranz des Nasentubus). Ansonsten war dieser neuartige Duftstoff-Applikator gut verträglich. Die Anwendung des Rosendufts erzielte allerdings keine signifikanten Stimmungsunterschiede zwischen Rose und Placebo, jedoch zeigten einige Unterkategorien des Befindlichkeitsfragebogens einen positiven Trend zur Verbesserung durch Rosenduft-Applikation. Die zufriedenstellende Durchführbarkeit der Applikation und des Versuchsaufbaus mit diesem neuen Gerät und dem Schlauchsystem samt Nasenbrille konnte gezeigt werden. Die Duftstoffanwendung mit ätherischem Rosenöl wird gut vertragen. Eine längere Anwendungsphase ist geplant, um potenziell signifikante Ergebnisse zu erzielen