Action-related semantic content and negation polarity modulate motor areas during sentence reading: An event-related desynchronization study

Alemanno, Federica; Houdayer, Elise; Cursi, Marco; Velikova, S.; Tettamanti, Marco; Comi, Giancarlo; Cappa, Stefano F.; Leocani, Letizia

doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2012.09.030

Cited by 30 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…Generation of an unspecific verb associated to a series of acoustically presented single nouns was shown to be accompanied by power suppression in the 15–25 Hz beta range on the left premotor cortex [38]. In addition to this, when reading hand-action versus abstract sentences, a decrease of mu rhythm was observed on left and central frontal leads [39]. Listening to verbal stimuli (pseudowords) that had been previously associated with movements resulted in suppression of the mu rhythm over the centro-parietal region [40].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Grasping Hand Verbs: Oscillatory Beta and Alpha Correlates of Action-Word Processing

et al. 2014

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The grounded cognition framework proposes that sensorimotor brain areas, which are typically involved in perception and action, also play a role in linguistic processing. We assessed oscillatory modulation during visual presentation of single verbs and localized cortical motor regions by means of isometric contraction of hand and foot muscles. Analogously to oscillatory activation patterns accompanying voluntary movements, we expected a somatotopically distributed suppression of beta and alpha frequencies in the motor cortex during processing of body-related action verbs. Magnetoencephalographic data were collected during presentation of verbs that express actions performed using the hands (H) or feet (F). Verbs denoting no bodily movement (N) were used as a control. Between 150 and 500 msec after visual word onset, beta rhythms were suppressed in H and F in comparison with N in the left hemisphere. Similarly, alpha oscillations showed left-lateralized power suppression in the H-N contrast, although at a later stage. The cortical oscillatory activity that typically occurs during voluntary movements is therefore found to somatotopically accompany the processing of body-related verbs. The combination of a localizer task with the oscillatory investigation applied to verb reading as in the present study provides further methodological possibilities of tracking language processing in the brain.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Grasping Hand Verbs: Oscillatory Beta and Alpha Correlates of Action-Word Processing

et al. 2014

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“…Similarly, transient differences between hand and abstract verbs emerged in event-related fields with a latency of about 600 ms. These results may reflect the same processes as described before for alpha and beta in action-related versus abstract language processing in the absence of overt manual movement (van Elk et al, 2010;Alemanno et al, 2012;Moreno et al, 2013;Niccolai et al, 2014) where stronger power suppression is thought to indicate motor system activation by verb processing itself. Alternatively, since this is not directly transferable to situations with concurrent motor tasks as in the interference paradigm, differences may arise mainly from the difference in task demands in the Go vs. NoGo conditions where manual responses were given only in the hand verb conditions.…”

Section: Meg Power Modulations and Semantic Interferencementioning

confidence: 52%

“…Taken together, the role of beta oscillations in embodied language processing makes it a feasible candidate for a functional mechanism of language-motor interference. Similarly, alpha band (8-13 Hz) oscillations have been associated with action execution (Salmelin et al, 1995;Sebastiani et al, 2014), observation (Caetano et al, 2007;Avanzini et al, 2012), motor imagery (Pfurtscheller et al, 2006;de Lange et al, 2008), spoken language processing (Strauß et al, 2014), and action language processing (Alemanno et al, 2012;Fargier et al, 2012). Since alpha band oscillations may be more related to sensory than motor processing (Salmelin et al, 1995;Brinkman et al, 2014;Sebastiani et al, 2014;Coll et al, 2015), the focus in the current study is on the beta band, but alpha oscillations are also investigated.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Language–motor interference reflected in MEG beta oscillations

et al. 2015

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The involvement of the brain's motor system in action-related language processing can lead to overt interference with simultaneous action execution. The aim of the current study was to find evidence for this behavioural interference effect and to investigate its neurophysiological correlates using oscillatory MEG analysis. Subjects performed a semantic decision task on single action verbs, describing actions executed with the hands or the feet, and abstract verbs. Right hand button press responses were given for concrete verbs only. Therefore, longer response latencies for hand compared to foot verbs should reflect interference. We found interference effects to depend on verb imageability: overall response latencies for hand verbs did not differ significantly from foot verbs. However, imageability interacted with effector: while response latencies to hand and foot verbs with low imageability were equally fast, those for highly imageable hand verbs were longer than for highly imageable foot verbs. The difference is reflected in motor-related MEG beta band power suppression, which was weaker for highly imageable hand verbs compared with highly imageable foot verbs. This provides a putative neuronal mechanism for language-motor interference where the involvement of cortical hand motor areas in hand verb processing interacts with the typical beta suppression seen before movements. We found that the facilitatory effect of higher imageability on action verb processing time is perturbed when verb and motor response relate to the same body part. Importantly, this effect is accompanied by neurophysiological effects in beta band oscillations. The attenuated power suppression around the time of movement, reflecting decreased cortical excitability, seems to result from motor simulation during action-related language processing. This is in line with embodied cognition theories.

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“…Surprisingly, there are to date only very few studies which implement this technique to study motorrelated semantics (Alemanno et al, 2012;Van Elk et al, 2010), all of which were done with native speakers and investigated sentencelevel processing. Thus, the issue of sensorimotor involvement in L2 semantic representations and language comprehension remains virtually unexplored in the ERD domain as well.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cortical motor systems are involved in second-language comprehension: Evidence from rapid mu-rhythm desynchronisation

Vukovic

Shtyrov

2014

NeuroImage

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Action-related semantic content and negation polarity modulate motor areas during sentence reading: An event-related desynchronization study

Cited by 30 publications

References 63 publications

Grasping Hand Verbs: Oscillatory Beta and Alpha Correlates of Action-Word Processing

Grasping Hand Verbs: Oscillatory Beta and Alpha Correlates of Action-Word Processing

Language–motor interference reflected in MEG beta oscillations

Cortical motor systems are involved in second-language comprehension: Evidence from rapid mu-rhythm desynchronisation

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