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Updated: Jun 23, 2026

Dissociation of the Confounding Influences of Expectancy and Integrative Difficulty Residing in Anomalous Sentences in Event-related Potential Studies

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Published on: May 9, 2019

Neuronal activation for semantically reversible sentences.

Fiona M Richardson¹, Michael S C Thomas, Cathy J Price

¹Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, UCL, 12 Queen Square, London, WC1N3BG. fiona.richardson@ucl.ac.uk

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

|May 19, 2009

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Semantically reversible sentences are difficult to understand and pose challenges for individuals with language impairments. Our fMRI study found these sentences engage phonological working memory's subarticulation component.

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Psycholinguistics
Cognitive Science

Background:

Semantically reversible sentences can lead to comprehension difficulties and are particularly challenging for individuals with language impairments like aphasia or Specific Language Impairment (SLI).
Understanding the neural basis of processing these complex sentences is crucial for diagnosing and treating language-related disorders.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the neural mechanisms underlying the comprehension of semantically reversible sentences using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
To determine whether processing semantically reversible sentences recruits general linguistic processing resources or specific components like phonological working memory.

Main Methods:

fMRI was employed to compare brain activation patterns in 41 healthy participants processing semantically reversible versus nonreversible sentences.
A varied experimental paradigm included linguistic and nonlinguistic tasks to isolate the cognitive load associated with semantic reversibility.

Main Results:

Increased neuronal activation was observed in a specific region on the left temporal-parietal boundary when processing semantically reversible sentences.
This region exhibited similar activation during a phonological working memory task involving articulation, suggesting a link between sentence processing and articulatory control.

Conclusions:

The processing of semantically reversible sentences places additional cognitive demands on the subarticulation component of phonological working memory.
These findings offer insights into the neural underpinnings of language comprehension difficulties and potential targets for intervention in language disorders.