Work

Sequential Processing of Lexical, Grammatical, and Phonological Information Within Broca’s Area

Year: 2009

Type: article

Abstract: Words, grammar, and phonology are linguistically distinct, yet their neural substrates are difficult to distinguish in macroscopic brain regions. We investigated whether they can be separated in time and space at the circuit level using intracranial electrophysiology (ICE), namely by recording local field potentials from populations of neurons using electrodes implanted in language-related brain regions while people read words verbatim or grammatically inflected them (present/past or singular/plural). Neighboring probes within Broca's area revealed distinct neuronal activity for lexical (approximately 200 milliseconds), grammatical (approximately 320 milliseconds), and phonological (approximately 450 milliseconds) processing, identically for nouns and verbs, in a region activated in the same patients and task in functional magnetic resonance imaging. This suggests that a linguistic processing sequence predicted on computational grounds is implemented in the brain in fine-grained spatiotemporally patterned activity.

Source: Science

DOI: 10.1126/science.1174481

Authors: Ned T. Sahin, Steven Pinker, Sydney S. Cash, Donald Schomer, Eric Halgren

Institutions: Harvard University, University of California San Diego, Massachusetts General Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

Language: English

Topic: Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism

Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience

Field: Neuroscience

Domain: Life Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Center for Research Resources, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development