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Early occipital sensitivity to syntactic category is based on form typicality
Suzanne Dikker1, Hugh Rabagliati, Thomas A Farmer
1Department of Linguistics, New York University, 10 Washington Place, New York, NY 10003, USA. suzanne.dikker@nyu.edu
Psychological Science
|May 21, 2010
Summary
Brain activity in visual cortex rapidly processes unexpected word categories during language comprehension. This suggests early form-based predictions guide our efficient understanding of sentences.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Psycholinguistics
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Syntactic processing influences language behavior and neural activity rapidly.
- Mechanisms for rapid syntactic information extraction are not well understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- Investigate the neural basis of rapid syntactic processing.
- Determine how the brain predicts upcoming syntactic categories.
Main Methods:
- Magnetoencephalography (MEG) was used to measure brain activity.
- Participants were exposed to sentences with unexpected word categories.
Main Results:
- Enhanced visual cortex activity occurred 120 ms after exposure to unexpected word categories.
- This activity correlated with the compatibility between word form and predicted category properties.
Conclusions:
- The brain makes rapid, form-based predictions about syntactic categories.
- These predictions are available to sensory cortices, contributing to efficient language comprehension.
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