An Event-related FMRI Study of Syntactic and Semantic Violations

Overview

Journal J Psycholinguist Res

Publisher Springer

Specialty Psychology

Date 2001 Aug 29

PMID 11523278

Citations 52

Authors

A J Newman

R Pancheva

K Ozawa

H J Neville

M T Ullman

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify brain regions involved in syntactic and semantic processing. Healthy adult males read well-formed sentences randomly intermixed with sentences which either contained violations of syntactic structure or were semantically implausible. Reading anomalous sentences, as compared to well-formed sentences, yielded distinct patterns of activation for the two violation types. Syntactic violations elicited significantly greater activation than semantic violations primarily in superior frontal cortex. Semantically incongruent sentences elicited greater activation than syntactic violations in the left hippocampal and parahippocampal gyri, the angular gyri bilaterally, the right middle temporal gyrus, and the left inferior frontal sulcus. These results demonstrate that syntactic and semantic processing result in nonidentical patterns of activation, including greater frontal engagement during syntactic processing and larger increases in temporal and temporo-parietal regions during semantic analyses.

Citing Articles

Neural adaptations in short-term learning of sign language revealed by fMRI and DTI.

Alotaibi S, Alamri S, Alsaleh A, Meyer G Sci Rep. 2025; 15(1):5345.

PMID: 39948087 PMC: 11825837. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-84468-z.

Uncovering narrative aging: an underlying neural mechanism compensated through spatial constructional ability.

Li Y, Zhang J, Li X, Zhang Z Commun Biol. 2025; 8(1):104.

PMID: 39837995 PMC: 11751312. DOI: 10.1038/s42003-025-07501-5.

A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study of Phrase Structure and Subject Island Violations.

Matchin W, Almeida D, Hickok G, Sprouse J J Cogn Neurosci. 2024; 37(2):414-442.

PMID: 39509099 PMC: 11753796. DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_02266.

Linguistic inputs must be syntactically parsable to fully engage the language network.

Kauf C, Kim H, Lee E, Jhingan N, Selena She J, Taliaferro M bioRxiv. 2024; .

PMID: 38948870 PMC: 11212959. DOI: 10.1101/2024.06.21.599332.

An fMRI study of phrase structure and subject island violations.

Matchin W, Almeida D, Hickok G, Sprouse J bioRxiv. 2024; .

PMID: 38746262 PMC: 11092748. DOI: 10.1101/2024.05.05.592579.

References

Buckner R, Koutstaal W . Functional neuroimaging studies of encoding, priming, and explicit memory retrieval. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1998; 95(3):891-8. PMC: 33813. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.95.3.891. View

Damasio A . Aphasia. N Engl J Med. 1992; 326(8):531-9. DOI: 10.1056/NEJM199202203260806. View

Caplan D, Alpert N, Waters G . Effects of syntactic structure and propositional number on patterns of regional cerebral blood flow. J Cogn Neurosci. 1998; 10(4):541-52. DOI: 10.1162/089892998562843. View

McCarthy G, Nobre A, Bentin S, Spencer D . Language-related field potentials in the anterior-medial temporal lobe: I. Intracranial distribution and neural generators. J Neurosci. 1995; 15(2):1080-9. PMC: 6577814. View

Damasio A, Damasio H . Brain and language. Sci Am. 1992; 267(3):88-95. DOI: 10.1038/scientificamerican0992-88. View

Patel A, Gibson E, Ratner J, Besson M, Holcomb P . Processing syntactic relations in language and music: an event-related potential study. J Cogn Neurosci. 1998; 10(6):717-33. DOI: 10.1162/089892998563121. View

Kuperberg G, McGuire P, Bullmore E, Brammer M, Rabe-Hesketh S, Wright I . Common and distinct neural substrates for pragmatic, semantic, and syntactic processing of spoken sentences: an fMRI study. J Cogn Neurosci. 2000; 12(2):321-41. DOI: 10.1162/089892900562138. View

Richter W, Ugurbil K, Georgopoulos A, Kim S . Time-resolved fMRI of mental rotation. Neuroreport. 1998; 8(17):3697-702. DOI: 10.1097/00001756-199712010-00008. View

Graybiel A . Building action repertoires: memory and learning functions of the basal ganglia. Curr Opin Neurobiol. 1995; 5(6):733-41. DOI: 10.1016/0959-4388(95)80100-6. View

10.

Friederici A . The time course of syntactic activation during language processing: a model based on neuropsychological and neurophysiological data. Brain Lang. 1995; 50(3):259-81. DOI: 10.1006/brln.1995.1048. View

11.

Steinhauer K, Alter K, Friederici A . Brain potentials indicate immediate use of prosodic cues in natural speech processing. Nat Neurosci. 1999; 2(2):191-6. DOI: 10.1038/5757. View

12.

Wise S, Fried I, Olivier A, Paus T, Rizzolatti G, Zilles K . Workshop on the anatomic definition and boundaries of the supplementary sensorimotor area. Adv Neurol. 1996; 70:489-95. View

13.

Cox R, Hyde J . Software tools for analysis and visualization of fMRI data. NMR Biomed. 1997; 10(4-5):171-8. DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-1492(199706/08)10:4/5<171::aid-nbm453>3.0.co;2-l. View

14.

Lepage M, Habib R, Tulving E . Hippocampal PET activations of memory encoding and retrieval: the HIPER model. Hippocampus. 1998; 8(4):313-22. DOI: 10.1002/(SICI)1098-1063(1998)8:4<313::AID-HIPO1>3.0.CO;2-I. View

15.

Price C, Moore C, Humphreys G, Wise R . Segregating Semantic from Phonological Processes during Reading. J Cogn Neurosci. 2013; 9(6):727-33. DOI: 10.1162/jocn.1997.9.6.727. View

16.

Woods R, Grafton S, Watson J, Sicotte N, Mazziotta J . Automated image registration: II. Intersubject validation of linear and nonlinear models. J Comput Assist Tomogr. 1998; 22(1):153-65. DOI: 10.1097/00004728-199801000-00028. View

17.

Cohen N, Squire L . Preserved learning and retention of pattern-analyzing skill in amnesia: dissociation of knowing how and knowing that. Science. 1980; 210(4466):207-10. DOI: 10.1126/science.7414331. View

18.

Woods R, Grafton S, Holmes C, Cherry S, Mazziotta J . Automated image registration: I. General methods and intrasubject, intramodality validation. J Comput Assist Tomogr. 1998; 22(1):139-52. DOI: 10.1097/00004728-199801000-00027. View

19.

Demb J, Desmond J, Wagner A, Vaidya C, Glover G, Gabrieli J . Semantic encoding and retrieval in the left inferior prefrontal cortex: a functional MRI study of task difficulty and process specificity. J Neurosci. 1995; 15(9):5870-8. PMC: 6577672. View

20.

Ullman M, Pancheva R, Love T, Yee E, Swinney D, Hickok G . Neural correlates of lexicon and grammar: evidence from the production, reading, and judgment of inflection in aphasia. Brain Lang. 2005; 93(2):185-238. DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2004.10.001. View