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Robust Effects of Working Memory Demand during Naturalistic Language Comprehension in Language-Selective Cortex.

Cory Shain1, Idan A Blank2, Evelina Fedorenko3

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The Journal of Neuroscience : the Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience
|August 24, 2022
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Language comprehension uses working memory (WM) for structure building, independent of word predictability. This WM demand is processed in language-specific brain regions, not general cognitive networks.

Keywords:
domain specificityfMRInaturalisticsentence processingsurprisalworking memory

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Science
  • Psycholinguistics

Background:

  • Understanding language requires inferring meaning from real-time signals.
  • Working memory (WM) and surprisal (word predictability) are debated mechanisms in language processing.
  • Previous studies controlling for surprisal showed mixed results regarding WM's role.

Purpose of the Study:

  • Investigate WM demand during naturalistic language comprehension, controlling for surprisal.
  • Determine if WM mechanisms in language are language-specialized or domain-general.
  • Examine neural correlates of WM demand in language processing.

Main Methods:

  • Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study.
  • Naturalistic language comprehension task (story listening).
  • Controlled for word surprisal and localized language and multiple-demand networks.

Main Results:

  • Found significant WM demand effects in the language network, independent of surprisal.
  • Observed no WM demand effects in the multiple-demand network.
  • WM demand during language comprehension is associated with language-selective brain regions.

Conclusions:

  • Language comprehension involves computationally demanding structure building in WM.
  • WM operations in language processing are primarily handled by language-specialized neural resources.
  • Findings support a core role for WM in incremental language processing, distinct from domain-general WM systems.