The neostriatum and response selection in overt sentence production: an fMRI study.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Argyropoulos GP
PROVIDER: S-EPMC3759659 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Nov
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
The neostriatum and response selection in overt sentence production: an fMRI study.
Argyropoulos Georgios P GP Tremblay Pascale P Small Steven L SL
NeuroImage 20130528
A number of premotor and prefrontal brain areas have been recently shown to play a significant role in response selection in overt sentence production. These areas are anatomically connected to the basal ganglia, a set of subcortical structures that has been traditionally involved in response selection across behavioral domains. The putamen and the caudate, the two major inputs to the basal ganglia, have been shown to undertake motor- as well as non-motor-related selection operations in language ...[more]
Similar Datasets
Project description:Sentences such as The author started the book are indeterminate because they do not make explicit what the subject (the author) started doing with the object (the book). In principle, indeterminate sentences allow for an infinite number of interpretations. One theory, however, assumes that these sentences are resolved by semanticcoercion, a linguistic process that forces the noun book to be interpreted as an activity (e.g., writing the book) or by a process that interpolates this activity information in the resulting enriched semantic composition. An alternative theory, pragmatic, assumes classical semantic composition, whereby meaning arises from the denotation of words and how they are combined syntactically, with enrichment obtained via pragmatic inferences beyond linguistic-semantic processes. Cognitive neuroscience studies investigating the neuroanatomical and functional correlates of indeterminate sentences have shown activations either at the ventromedial pre-frontal cortex (vmPFC) or at the left inferior frontal gyrus (L-IFG). These studies have supported the semantic coercion theory assuming that one of these regions is where enriched semantic composition takes place. Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we found that indeterminate sentences activate bilaterally the superior temporal gyrus (STG), the right inferior frontal gyrus (R-IFG), and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), more so than control sentences (The author wrote the book). Activation of indeterminate sentences exceeded that of anomalous sentences (…drank the book) and engaged more left- and right-hemisphere areas than other sentence types. We suggest that the widespread activations for indeterminate sentences represent the deployment of pragmatic-inferential processes, which seek to enrich sentence content without necessarily resorting to semantic coercion.
| S-EPMC5168646 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Lexical-semantic knowledge is a core language component that undergoes prolonged development throughout childhood and is therefore highly amenable to developmental studies. Most previous lexical-semantic functional MRI (fMRI) studies have been limited to single-word or word-pair tasks, outside a sentence context. Our objective was to investigate the development of lexical-semantic language networks in typically developing children using a more 'ecological' sentence-embedded semantic task that permitted performance monitoring while minimizing head movement by avoiding overt speech. Sixteen adults and 23 children completed two fMRI runs of an auditory lexical-semantic decision task with a button-press response, using reverse speech as control condition. Children and adults showed similar activation in bilateral temporal and left inferior frontal regions. Greater activation in adults than in children was seen in left inferior parietal, premotor, and inferior frontal regions, and in bilateral supplementary motor area (SMA). Specifically for semantically incongruous sentences, adults also showed greater activation than children in left inferior frontal cortex, possibly related to enhanced 'top-down' control. Age-dependent activation increases in motor-related regions were shown to be unrelated to overt motor responses, but could be associated with covert speech accompanying semantic decision. Unlike previous studies, age-dependent differences were not detected in posterior sensory cortices (such as extrastriate cortex), nor in middle temporal gyrus.
| S-EPMC3630793 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The reproducibility of three different aspects of fMRI activations-namely binary activation maps, effect size and spatial distribution of local maxima-was evaluated for an auditory sentence comprehension task with high attention demand on a group of 17 subjects that were scanned on five different occasions. While in the scanner subjects were asked to listen to a series of six short everyday sentences from the CUNY sentence test. Comprehension and attention to the stimuli were monitored after each listen condition epoch by having subjects answer a series of multiple-choice questions. Statistical maps of activation for the listen condition were computed at three different levels: overall results for all imaging sessions, group-level/single-session results for each of the five imaging occasions, and single-subject/single-session results computed for each subject and each scanning occasion independently. The experimental task recruited a distributed bilateral network with processing nodes located in the lateral temporal cortex, inferior frontal cortex, medial BA6, medial occipital cortex and subcortical structures such as the putamen and the thalamus. Reproducibility of these activations at the group level was high (83.95% of the imaged volume was consistently classified as active/inactive across all five imaging sessions), indicating that sites of neuronal activity associated with auditory comprehension can reliably be detected with fMRI in healthy subjects, across repeated measures after group averaging. At the single-subject level reproducibility ranged from moderate to high, although no significant differences were found on behavioral measures across subjects or sessions. This result suggests that contextual differences-i.e., those specific to each imaging session, can modulate our ability to detect fMRI activations associated with speech comprehension in individual subjects.
| S-EPMC3008333 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Much research in cognitive neuroscience supports prediction as a canonical computation of cognition across domains. Is such predictive coding implemented by feedback from higher-order domain-general circuits, or is it locally implemented in domain-specific circuits? What information sources are used to generate these predictions? This study addresses these two questions in the context of language processing. We present fMRI evidence from a naturalistic comprehension paradigm (1) that predictive coding in the brain's response to language is domain-specific, and (2) that these predictions are sensitive both to local word co-occurrence patterns and to hierarchical structure. Using a recently developed continuous-time deconvolutional regression technique that supports data-driven hemodynamic response function discovery from continuous BOLD signal fluctuations in response to naturalistic stimuli, we found effects of prediction measures in the language network but not in the domain-general multiple-demand network, which supports executive control processes and has been previously implicated in language comprehension. Moreover, within the language network, surface-level and structural prediction effects were separable. The predictability effects in the language network were substantial, with the model capturing over 37% of explainable variance on held-out data. These findings indicate that human sentence processing mechanisms generate predictions about upcoming words using cognitive processes that are sensitive to hierarchical structure and specialized for language processing, rather than via feedback from high-level executive control mechanisms.
| S-EPMC7140726 | biostudies-literature
Project description:IntroductionWords are not processed in isolation but in rich contexts that are used to modulate and facilitate language comprehension. Here, we investigate distinct neural networks underlying two types of contexts, the current linguistic environment and verb-based syntactic preferences.MethodsWe had two main manipulations. The first was the current linguistic environment, where the relative frequencies of two syntactic structures (prepositional object [PO] and double-object [DO]) would either follow everyday linguistic experience or not. The second concerned the preference toward one or the other structure depending on the verb; learned in everyday language use and stored in memory. German participants were reading PO and DO sentences in German while brain activity was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging.ResultsFirst, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) showed a pattern of activation that integrated the current linguistic environment with everyday linguistic experience. When the input did not match everyday experience, the unexpected frequent structure showed higher activation in the ACC than the other conditions and more connectivity from the ACC to posterior parts of the language network. Second, verb-based surprisal of seeing a structure given a verb (PO verb preference but DO structure presentation) resulted, within the language network (left inferior frontal and left middle/superior temporal gyrus) and the precuneus, in increased activation compared to a predictable verb-structure pairing.ConclusionIn conclusion, (1) beyond the canonical language network, brain areas engaged in prediction and error signaling, such as the ACC, might use the statistics of syntactic structures to modulate language processing, (2) the language network is directly engaged in processing verb preferences. These two networks show distinct influences on sentence processing.
| S-EPMC6625468 | biostudies-literature
Project description:To investigate the role of verbs in sentence production, the experiment reported here employed a simple sentence elicitation technique based on separate elicitor images for the different sentence constituents: subject, verb, and verbal modifier. This permitted presenting them in different temporal configurations to see whether the time taken to start uttering the subject of a sentence was contingent on having access to information about the action that would determine verb selection. The results show that sentence onset latencies varied in relation to the presentation of the verb elicitor, suggesting that sentence processing depends crucially on having access to the information pertaining to the verb. What is more, increases in the lexical frequency of the actual verbs used significantly reduced onset latencies for the subject noun as expected if the verb lemmas have to be retrieved before the sentence can be processed. Among other things, this argues against strict linearity and in favor of hierarchical incrementality in sentence production. Additionally, the results hint at the possibility that other obligatory sentence constituents [namely, direct objects (DOs) in transitive sentences] may also have to be available before the sentence can be processed.
| S-EPMC7042407 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The selection of the appropriate hemodynamic response function (HRF) for signal modeling in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is important. Although the use of the boxcar-shaped hemodynamic response function (BHRF) and canonical hemodynamic response (CHRF) has gained increasing popularity in rodent fMRI studies, whether the selected HRF affects the results of rodent fMRI has not been fully elucidated. Here we investigated the signal change and t-statistic sensitivities of BHRF, CHRF, and impulse response function (IRF). The effect of HRF selection on different tasks was analyzed by using data collected from two groups of rats receiving either 3 mA whisker pad or 3 mA forepaw electrical stimulations (n = 10 for each group). Under whisker pad stimulation with large blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) signal change (4.31 ± 0.42%), BHRF significantly underestimated signal changes (P < 0.001) and t-statistics (P < 0.001) compared with CHRF or IRF. CHRF and IRF did not provide significantly different t-statistics (P > 0.05). Under forepaw stimulation with small BOLD signal change (1.71 ± 0.34%), different HRFs provided insignificantly different t-statistics (P > 0.05). Therefore, the selected HRF can influence data analysis in rodent fMRI experiments with large BOLD responses but not in those with small BOLD responses.
| S-EPMC6503084 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The neurobiology of sentence comprehension is well-studied but the properties and characteristics of sentence processing networks remain unclear and highly debated. Sign languages (i.e., visual-manual languages), like spoken languages, have complex grammatical structures and thus can provide valuable insights into the specificity and function of brain regions supporting sentence comprehension. The present study aims to characterize how these well-studied spoken language networks can adapt in adults to be responsive to sign language sentences, which contain combinatorial semantic and syntactic visual-spatial linguistic information. Twenty native English-speaking undergraduates who had completed introductory American Sign Language (ASL) courses viewed videos of the following conditions during fMRI acquisition: signed sentences, signed word lists, English sentences and English word lists. Overall our results indicate that native language (L1) sentence processing resources are responsive to ASL sentence structures in late L2 learners, but that certain L1 sentence processing regions respond differently to L2 ASL sentences, likely due to the nature of their contribution to language comprehension. For example, L1 sentence regions in Broca's area were significantly more responsive to L2 than L1 sentences, supporting the hypothesis that Broca's area contributes to sentence comprehension as a cognitive resource when increased processing is required. Anterior temporal L1 sentence regions were sensitive to L2 ASL sentence structure, but demonstrated no significant differences in activation to L1 than L2, suggesting its contribution to sentence processing is modality-independent. Posterior superior temporal L1 sentence regions also responded to ASL sentence structure but were more activated by English than ASL sentences. An exploratory analysis of the neural correlates of L2 ASL proficiency indicates that ASL proficiency is positively correlated with increased activations in response to ASL sentences in L1 sentence processing regions. Overall these results suggest that well-established fronto-temporal spoken language networks involved in sentence processing exhibit functional plasticity with late L2 ASL exposure, and thus are adaptable to syntactic structures widely different than those in an individual's native language. Our findings also provide valuable insights into the unique contributions of the inferior frontal and superior temporal regions that are frequently implicated in sentence comprehension but whose exact roles remain highly debated.
| S-EPMC6136263 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Natural language involves both speaking and listening. Recent models claim that production and comprehension share aspects of processing and are linked within individuals (Pickering and Garrod, 2004, 2013; MacDonald, 2013; Dell and Chang, 2014). Evidence for this claim has come from studies of cross-modality structural priming, mainly examining processing in the direction of comprehension to production. The current study replicated these comprehension to production findings and developed a novel cross-modal structural priming paradigm from production to comprehension using a temporally sensitive online measure of comprehension, Event-Related Potentials. For Comprehension-to-Production priming, participants first listened to active or passive sentences and then described target pictures using either structure. In Production-to-Comprehension priming, participants first described a picture using either structure and then listened to target passive sentences while EEG was recorded. Comprehension-to-Production priming showed the expected passive sentence priming for syntactic choice, but not response time (RT) or average syllable duration. In Production-to-Comprehension priming, primed, versus unprimed, passive sentences elicited a reduced N400. These effects support the notion that production and comprehension share aspects of processing and are linked within the individual. Moreover, this paradigm can be used for the exploration priming at different linguistic levels as well as the influence of extra-linguistic factors on natural language use.
| S-EPMC6546884 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundPre-surgical mapping of language using functional MRI aimed principally to determine the dominant hemisphere. This mapping is currently performed using covert linguistic task in way to avoid motion artefacts potentially biasing the results. However, overt task is closer to natural speaking, allows a control on the performance of the task, and may be easier to perform for stressed patients and children. However, overt task, by activating phonological areas on both hemispheres and areas involved in pitch prosody control in the non-dominant hemisphere, is expected to modify the determination of the dominant hemisphere by the calculation of the lateralization index (LI).ObjectiveHere, we analyzed the modifications in the LI and the interactions between cognitive networks during covert and overt speech task.MethodsThirty-three volunteers participated in this study, all but four were right-handed. They performed three functional sessions consisting of (1) covert and (2) overt generation of a short sentence semantically linked with an audibly presented word, from which we estimated the "Covert" and "Overt" contrasts, and a (3) resting-state session. The resting-state session was submitted to spatial independent component analysis to identify language network at rest (LANG), cingulo-opercular network (CO), and ventral attention network (VAN). The LI was calculated using the bootstrapping method.ResultsThe LI of the LANG was the most left-lateralized (0.66 ± 0.38). The LI shifted from a moderate leftward lateralization for the Covert contrast (0.32 ± 0.38) to a right lateralization for the Overt contrast (- 0.13 ± 0.30). The LI significantly differed from each other. This rightward shift was due to the recruitment of right hemispheric temporal areas together with the nodes of the CO.ConclusionAnalyzing the overt speech by fMRI allowed improvement in the physiological knowledge regarding the coordinated activity of the intrinsic connectivity networks. However, the rightward shift of the LI in this condition did not provide the basic information on the hemispheric language dominance. Overt linguistic task cannot be recommended for clinical purpose when determining hemispheric dominance for language.
| S-EPMC8638205 | biostudies-literature