Involvement of the left inferior frontal gyrus in predictive inference making

Although predictive inference in reading has been extensively investigated with behavioral paradigms, little is known about its neural substrates. Manipulating the likelihood that a particular event can be predicted from the content of a preceding three-sentence story, the present functional MRI study showed that the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) and the right lingual gyrus were involved in predictive inference generation. It is suggested that the LIFG was responsible for the construction of predictive inference and the right lingual gyrus for integrating the constructed inference into a coherent text representation. Combined with previous research, the results provide brain imaging evidence consistent with predictions from the Schmalhofer et al. model (Discourse Processes, 33, 105-13, 2002) which intends to unify predictive inference and bridging inference in a single theoretical framework.