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Related Concept Videos

Language and Cognition01:27

Language and Cognition

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Language serves as a bridge between ideas and communication, influencing how individuals perceive and interact with the world. Psychologists have long debated whether language shapes thought or vice versa. This discussion gained grip with Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf in the 1940s, who proposed that language determines thought, a concept known as linguistic determinism. They suggested that the vocabulary and structure of a language influence how its speakers think and perceive reality.
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Higher Mental Functions of the Brain: Language01:10

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Language is a system of communication that allows the expression of thoughts, ideas, and feelings. The brain processes language in both hemispheres.
Language formation and comprehension take place in the dominant hemisphere. The dominant hemisphere is responsible for understanding the meaning of spoken, written, or sign language, as well as the ability to communicate. For most people, the left hemisphere is the dominant one. The right hemisphere, then, gives tone and emotional context to the...
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Language Development01:22

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Children master language quickly and with relative ease, supported by both biological predisposition and reinforcement. B. F. Skinner (1957) proposed that language is learned through reinforcement, while Noam Chomsky (1965) argued that language acquisition mechanisms are biologically determined.
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Sep 4, 2025

Examining Online Syntactic Processing of Spoken Complex Sentences in Chinese Using Dual-Modal Interference Tasks
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Alpha power during task performance predicts individual language comprehension.

P Wang1, Y He2, B Maess1

  • 1Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Brain Networks Group, Leipzig, Germany.

Neuroimage
|July 14, 2022
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Alpha power attenuation during cognitive tasks, like language comprehension, correlates with better performance. This brain activity reflects specific cognitive processes, not just general attention.

Keywords:
Alpha attenuationEEG/MEGEmbedded sentencesIndividual alphaSentence comprehension

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Science
  • Psycholinguistics

Background:

  • Alpha power attenuation during cognitive tasks is theorized to indicate reduced inhibition and increased neural excitability, potentially enhancing performance.
  • Individual differences in alpha power may relate to variations in cognitive task performance.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the correlation between individual alpha power changes during a complex language comprehension task and task performance.
  • To determine if alpha power attenuation during cognitive tasks reflects task-specific mechanisms or general states like attention.

Main Methods:

  • Magnetoencephalography (MEG) was used to record brain activity in participants comprehending German sentences of varying syntactic complexity.
  • Analysis focused on spontaneous oscillatory activity (alpha power) at rest and during task performance.
  • Source reconstruction techniques were employed to localize the neural origins of the observed effects.

Main Results:

  • No significant association was found between resting-state alpha power (frequency or magnitude) and individual performance.
  • A significant positive correlation emerged between alpha power attenuation during sentence processing and individual language comprehension performance.
  • Source reconstruction identified these task-related alpha power changes predominantly in left temporal-parietal regions and their right-hemisphere counterparts.

Conclusions:

  • In-task alpha power attenuation is a reliable neural correlate of individual performance in complex language comprehension.
  • This finding supports the view that alpha power modulation during cognitive tasks is intrinsically linked to the core mechanisms of the cognitive process itself.
  • The results differentiate task-specific neural dynamics from more general attentional or vigilance-related phenomena.