Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

When temporal terms belie conceptual order

T F Münte1, K Schiltz, M Kutas

  • 1Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla 92093-0515, USA. muente.thomas@mh-hannover.de

Nature
|September 17, 1998
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Changes in attentional resources during the acquisition of laparoscopic surgical skills.

BJS open·2021
Same author

[Standards for treatment in forensic committment according to § 63 and § 64 of the German criminal code : Interdisciplinary task force of the DGPPN].

Der Nervenarzt·2017
Same author

Brain stimulation in obesity.

International journal of obesity (2005)·2017
Same author

Gray matter anomalies in pedophiles with and without a history of child sexual offending.

Translational psychiatry·2017
Same author

Striatal dysfunction in X-linked dystonia-parkinsonism is associated with disease progression.

European journal of neurology·2017
Same author

Mild Thyrotoxicosis Leads to Brain Perfusion Changes: An Arterial Spin Labelling Study.

Journal of neuroendocrinology·2016
Same journal

Incoming US science academy chief vows to 'double down' on research.

Nature·2026
Same journal

Author Correction: Synthesis of enantioenriched atropisomers by biocatalytic deracemization.

Nature·2026
Same journal

Electrodeposited self-assembled molecules for perovskite photovoltaics.

Nature·2026
Same journal

Neutrino's nursery found: the 'Shadow Blaster'.

Nature·2026
Same journal

Dementia risk in middle-aged people linked to a blood protein.

Nature·2026
Same journal

Daily briefing: What's really happening with trust in science.

Nature·2026
See all related articles

Understanding sentence order is crucial for real-time event processing. This study reveals that the brain immediately processes temporal cues like "before" and "after," impacting sentence comprehension and working memory.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Psycholinguistics
  • Neuroscience

Background:

  • Human cognition typically perceives time as a linear sequence of events.
  • Linguistic structures, such as temporal connectives ('before', 'after'), allow for flexible event ordering in communication.
  • Sentences deviating from chronological order necessitate additional cognitive processing.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the neural mechanisms underlying the real-time processing of temporal information in written sentences.
  • To determine how the brain computes the discourse implications of temporal connectives.
  • To examine the role of working memory in processing sentences with non-chronological event order.

Main Methods:

  • Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from the scalp.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Participants processed sentences beginning with 'After' versus 'Before' to manipulate event order.
  • Brain responses were analyzed for differences in timing and magnitude.

    • Main Results:

    • Neural responses to 'before' and 'after' sentences diverged significantly within 300 milliseconds at left frontal scalp sites.
    • This divergence in brain activity increased throughout sentence processing.
    • The magnitude of the neural difference correlated with individual working memory capacity.

    Conclusions:

    • The brain immediately engages in discourse-level computation upon encountering temporal connectives.
    • The processing of non-chronological event order has immediate and sustained neural consequences.
    • Working memory capacity influences the neural processing of temporal discourse in sentence comprehension.