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Broca's area processes the hierarchical organization of observed action.

ABSTRACT: Broca's area has been suggested as the area responsible for the domain-general hierarchical processing of language and music. Although meaningful action shares a common hierarchical structure with language and music, the role of Broca's area in this domain remains controversial. To address the involvement of Broca's area in the processing action hierarchy, the activation of Broca's area was measured using near-infrared spectroscopy. Measurements were taken while participants watched silent movies that featured hand movements playing familiar and unfamiliar melodies. The unfamiliar melodies were reversed versions of the familiar melodies. Additionally, to investigate the effect of a motor experience on the activation of Broca's area, the participants were divided into well-trained and less-trained groups. The results showed that Broca's area in the well-trained participants demonstrated a significantly larger activation in response to the hand motion when an unfamiliar melody was played than when a familiar melody was played. However, Broca's area in the less-trained participants did not show a contrast between conditions despite identical abilities of the two participant groups to identify the melodies by watching key pressing actions. These results are consistent with previous findings that Broca's area exhibits increased activation in response to grammatically violated sentences and musically deviated chord progressions as well as the finding that this region does not represent the processing of grammatical structure in less-proficient foreign language speakers. Thus, the current study suggests that Broca's area represents action hierarchy and that sufficiently long motor training is necessary for it to become sensitive to motor syntax. Therefore, the notion that hierarchical processing in Broca's area is a common function shared between language and music may help to explain the role of Broca's area in action perception.

SUBMITTER: Wakita M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3894456 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Broca's area processes the hierarchical organization of observed action.

Wakita Masumi M

Frontiers in human neuroscience 20140117

Broca's area has been suggested as the area responsible for the domain-general hierarchical processing of language and music. Although meaningful action shares a common hierarchical structure with language and music, the role of Broca's area in this domain remains controversial. To address the involvement of Broca's area in the processing action hierarchy, the activation of Broca's area was measured using near-infrared spectroscopy. Measurements were taken while participants watched silent movie ...[more]

PMID: 24478668

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Project description:The exact nature of the role of Broca's area in control of speech and whether it is exerted at the cognitive or at the motor level is still debated. Intraoperative evidence of a lack of motor responses to direct electrical stimulation (DES) of Broca's area and the observation that its stimulation induces a "speech arrest" without an apparent effect on the ongoing activity of phono-articulatory muscles, raises the argument. Essentially, attribution of direct involvement of Broca's area in motor control of speech, requires evidence of a functional connection of this area with the phono-articulatory muscles' motoneurons. With a quantitative approach we investigated, in 20 patients undergoing surgery for brain tumors, whether DES delivered on Broca's area affects the recruitment of the phono-articulatory muscles' motor units. The electromyography (EMG) of the muscles active during two speech tasks (object picture naming and counting) was recorded during and in absence of DES on Broca's area. Offline, the EMG of each muscle was analyzed in frequency (power spectrum, PS) and time domain (root mean square, RMS) and the two conditions compared. Results show that DES on Broca's area induces an intensity-dependent "speech arrest." The intensity of DES needed to induce "speech arrest" when applied on Broca's area was higher when compared to the intensity effective on the neighboring pre-motor/motor cortices. Notably, PS and RMS measured on the EMG recorded during "speech arrest" were superimposable to those recorded at baseline. Partial interruptions of speech were not observed. Speech arrest was an "all-or-none" effect: muscle activation started only by removing DES, as if DES prevented speech onset. The same effect was observed when stimulating directly the subcortical fibers running below Broca's area. Intraoperative data point to Broca's area as a functional gate authorizing the phonetic translation to be executed by the motor areas. Given the absence of a direct effect on motor units recruitment, a direct control of Broca's area on the phono-articulatory apparatus seems unlikely. Moreover, the strict correlation between DES-intensity and speech prevention, might attribute this effect to the inactivation of the subcortical fibers rather than to Broca's cortical neurons.

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Broca's area processes the hierarchical organization of observed action.

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Broca's area processes the hierarchical organization of observed action.

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