Work

Activation of Broca's area by syntactic processing under conditions of concurrent articulation

Year: 2000

Type: article

Abstract: Regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) was measured with positron emission tomography (PET) when 11 subjects made plausibility judgments about written sentences that varied in their syntactic complexity. While making their judgments, subjects uttered the word "double" aloud at a rate of one utterance per second to inhibit their ability to rehearse the sentences. Blood flow increased in Broca's area when subjects made judgments about the more complex sentences. This result replicates and extends previous findings that blood flow increases in this region when subjects process complex syntax under no interference conditions. The results of this experiment provide strong evidence that the increase in blood flow seen in Broca's area in association with processing syntactically complex structures is not due to subvocal rehearsal of those structures, but rather results from processing syntactic forms themselves.

Source: Human Brain Mapping

DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1097-0193(200002)9:2<65::aid-hbm1>3.0.co;2-4

Authors: David Caplan, Nathaniel Alpert, Gloria Waters, Anthony Olivieri

Institutions: Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston University

Language: English

Topic: Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism

Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience

Field: Neuroscience

Domain: Life Sciences

Open Access status: bronze

Funder: National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders

Award: Functional Neuroimaging Studies of Syntactic Comprehension