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Rapid syntactic pre-activation in Broca's area: Concurrent electrophysiological and haemodynamic recordings
Pelle Söderström1, Merle Horne2, Peter Mannfolk3
1Department of Linguistics, Centre for Languages and Literature, Lund University, Box 201, 221 00 Lund, Sweden; MARCS Institute, Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia.
Brain Research
|June 9, 2018
Abstract:
Listeners are constantly trying to predict what the speaker will say next. We concurrently measured the electrophysiological and haemodynamic correlates of syntactic pre-activation, investigating when and where the brain processes speech melody cues to upcoming word order structure. Pre-activation of syntactic structure was reflected in a left-lateralised pre-activation negativity (PrAN), which was subserved by Broca's area in the left inferior frontal gyrus, as well as the contiguous left anterior insula.