Left cytoarchitectonic BA 44 processes syntactic gender violations in determiner phrases

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Psycholinguistics
• Cognitive Science

Background:

• Conflicting evidence exists regarding the role of left Brodmann's area (BA) 44 in processing syntactic violations.
• Some studies implicate BA 44, while others suggest the left premotor cortex is involved in detecting local syntactic errors.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the specific role of left cytoarchitectonic BA 44 in processing local syntactic violations, particularly those involving morphological features.
• To differentiate the functions of BA 44 from the adjacent left premotor cortex in syntactic processing.

Main Methods:

• Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure brain activity.
• Participants performed grammaticality judgments on German determiner phrases (DPs) with correct and violated syntactic gender.
• Stimuli were presented in both visual and auditory modalities to ensure generalizability.

Main Results:

• Left BA 44 showed significantly higher activation for syntactic gender-violating DPs compared to correct DPs.
• Behavioral data corroborated fMRI findings, with longer reaction times for violated DPs.
• Other activated regions included the left premotor cortex, supplementary motor area, and cerebellum.

Conclusions:

• Left BA 44 is involved in processing local syntactic violations that specifically involve morphological features, such as grammatical gender.
• The left premotor cortex appears to be more critical for detecting local word category violations.