We monitored regional cerebral activity with BOLD fMRI while subjects were presented written sentences differing in their grammatical structure (subject-relative or object-relative center-embedded clauses) and their short-term memory demands (short or long antecedent-gap linkages). A core region of left posterior superior temporal cortex was recruited during all sentence conditions in comparison to a pseudofont baseline, suggesting that this area plays a central role in sustaining comprehension that is common to all sentences. Right posterior superior temporal cortex was recruited during sentences with long compared to short antecedent-gap linkages regardless of grammatical structure, suggesting that this brain region supports passive short-term memory during sentence comprehension. Recruitment of left inferior frontal cortex was most clearly associated with sentences that featured both an object-relative clause and a long antecedent-gap linkage, suggesting that this region supports the cognitive resources required to maintain long-distance syntactic dependencies during the comprehension of grammatically complex sentences.
The neural basis for verb comprehension has proven elusive, in part because of the limited range of verb categories that have been assessed. In the present study, 16 healthy young adults were probed for the meaning associated with verbs of MOTION and verbs of COGNITION. We observed distinct patterns of activation for each verb subcategory: MOTION verbs are associated with recruitment of left ventral temporal-occipital cortex, bilateral prefrontal cortex and caudate, whereas COGNITION verbs are associated with left posterolateral temporal activation. These findings are consistent with the claim that the neural representations of verb subcategories are distinct. Although the "sensory-motor" hypothesis may play a role in explaining activation associated with MOTION verbs, the left posterolateral temporal distribution of cortical activation associated with COGNITION verbs cannot be easily explained by the "sensory-motor" hypothesis. We suggest that left posterolateral temporal activation supports aspects of lexical semantic processing concerned with the neural representation of propositional knowledge contributing to COGNITION verbs.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.