Vascular responses to syntactic processing: event-related fMRI study of relative clauses.

Full Abstract

Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to investigate the localization of syntactic processing in sentence comprehension. Matched pairs of sentences containing identical lexical items were compared. One member of the pair consisted of a syntactically simpler sentence, containing a subject relativized clause. The second member of the pair consisted of a syntactically more complex sentence, containing an object relativized clause. Ten subjects made plausibility judgments about the sentences, which were presented one word at a time on a computer screen. There was an increase in BOLD hemodynamic signal in response to the presentation of all sentences compared to fixation in both right and left occipital cortex, the left perisylvian cortex, and the left premotor and motor areas. BOLD signal increased in the left angular gyrus when subjects processed the complex portion of syntactically more complex sentences. This study shows that a hemodynamic response associated with processing the syntactically complex portions of a sentence can be localized to one part of the dominant perisylvian association cortex. Copyright 2001 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Author information

Author/s: Caplan, David (D); Vijayan, Sujith (S); Kuperberg, Gina (G); West, Caroline (C); Waters, Gloria (G); Greve, Doug (D); Dale, Anders M (AM);

Affiliation: Neuropsychology Laboratory, Department of Neurology, Vincent Burnham 827, Massachusetts General Hospital, Fruit Street, Boston, MA 02114, USA. Caplan(-atsign-)helix.mgh.harvard.edu

Grants: DC 02146 (Agency:NIDCD NIH HHS)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Clinical Trial; Journal Article; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

Journal: Human brain mapping (Hum Brain Mapp), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Jan; vol 15 (issue 1) : pp 26-38

Dates: Created 2001/12/17; Completed 2002/01/29; Revised 2007/11/14;

PMID: 11747098, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 2/18/2009, IMS Date: 18 Feb 2009 00:00:00)

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