Can skilled readers perform a second task in parallel? A functional connectivity MRI study

Newman, Aaron J.; Kenny, Sophie; Saint‐Aubin, Jean; Klein, Raymond M.

doi:10.1016/j.bandl.2012.11.009

Cited by 11 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…The first comes from studies of resting-state functional correlations, often referred to as “functional connectivity” (e.g., Fox and Raichle, 2007). In particular, the entire language system discussed above consistently emerges in the analyses of low-frequency oscillations across the brain during rest (e.g., Turken and Dronkers, 2011; Newman et al, 2013; Blank et al, submitted; see e.g., Catani et al, 2005, for DTI data consistent with the idea that these regions form a network). Although the interpretation of resting-state correlation patterns is still debated, these correlations appear to capture stable aspects of the functional organization of the human brain that persists across different mental states including sleep (e.g., Horovitz et al, 2008) and anesthesia (e.g., Vincent et al, 2007), and in some cases goes beyond known anatomical connections (e.g., Honey et al, 2009).…”

Section: High-level Language Processing Brain Regions and Domain-genementioning

confidence: 67%

The role of domain-general cognitive control in language comprehension

2014

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What role does domain-general cognitive control play in understanding linguistic input? Although much evidence has suggested that domain-general cognitive control and working memory resources are sometimes recruited during language comprehension, many aspects of this relationship remain elusive. For example, how frequently do cognitive control mechanisms get engaged when we understand language? And is this engagement necessary for successful comprehension? I here (a) review recent brain imaging evidence for the neural separability of the brain regions that support high-level linguistic processing vs. those that support domain-general cognitive control abilities; (b) define the space of possibilities for the relationship between these sets of brain regions; and (c) review the available evidence that constrains these possibilities to some extent. I argue that we should stop asking whether domain-general cognitive control mechanisms play a role in language comprehension, and instead focus on characterizing the division of labor between the cognitive control brain regions and the more functionally specialized language regions.

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Section: High-level Language Processing Brain Regions and Domain-genementioning

confidence: 67%

The role of domain-general cognitive control in language comprehension

2014

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“…As shown here, they also all show sensitivity to finer-grain syntactic manipulations. In addition, language regions exhibit synchronized low-frequency oscillations during rest (e.g., Cordes et al , 2000; Hampson, Peterson, Skudlarski, Gatenby, & Gore, 2002; Turken and Dronkers, 2011; Newman, Kenny, Saint-Aubin, & Klein, 2013; Yue, Zhang, Xu, Shu, & Li, 2013; Blank, Kanwisher & Fedorenko, 2014) and language comprehension (Blank et al, 2014). Finally, various functional properties of the language regions – such as, how large or lateralized they are – are strongly correlated across regions (Mahowald & Fedorenko, in revision).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Syntactic processing is distributed across the language system

et al. 2016

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Language comprehension recruits an extended set of regions in the human brain. Is syntactic processing localized to a particular region or regions within this system, or is it distributed across the entire ensemble of brain regions that support high-level linguistic processing? Evidence from aphasic patients is more consistent with the latter possibility: damage to many different language regions and to white-matter tracts connecting them has been shown to lead to similar syntactic comprehension deficits. However, brain imaging investigations of syntactic processing continue to focus on particular regions within the language system, often parts of Broca’s area and regions in the posterior temporal cortex. We hypothesized that, whereas the entire language system is in fact sensitive to syntactic complexity, the effects in some regions may be difficult to detect because of the overall lower response to language stimuli. Using an individual-subjects approach to localizing the language system, shown in prior work to be more sensitive than traditional group analyses, we indeed find responses to syntactic complexity throughout this system, consistent with the findings from the neuropsychological patient literature. We speculate that such distributed nature of syntactic processing could perhaps imply that syntax is inseparable from other aspects of language comprehension (e.g., lexico-semantic processing), in line with current linguistic and psycholinguistic theories and evidence. Neuroimaging investigations of syntactic processing thus need to expand their scope to include the entire system of high-level language processing regions in order to fully understand how syntax is instantiated in the human brain.

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“…Consequently, it does not enjoy a dedicated genetically programmed brain system and is instead achieved through a network of interconnected visual and psycholinguistic modules (Klein & McMullen, 1999). Newman, Kenny, Saint-Aubin, and Klein (2013) conducted an fMRI study to explore the reading network and any additional regions recruited by the letter-search task performed while reading. Functional connectivity (illustrated in Fig.…”

Section: Searching Adds To Reading Without Disturbing It: Neuroimaginmentioning

confidence: 99%

What a Simple Letter-Detection Task Can Tell Us About Cognitive Processes in Reading

Klein

Saint‐Aubin

2016

Curr Dir Psychol Sci

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Understanding reading is a central issue for psychology, with major societal implications. Over the past five decades, a simple letter-detection task has been used as a window on the psycholinguistic processes involved in reading. When readers are asked to read a text for comprehension while marking with a pencil all instances of a target letter, they miss some of the letters in a systematic way known as the missing-letter effect. In the current article, we review evidence from studies that have emphasized neuroimaging, eye movement, rapid serial visual presentation, and auditory passages. As we review, the missing-letter effect captures a wide variety of cognitive processes, including lexical activation, attention, and extraction of phrase structure. To account for the large set of findings generated by studies of the missing-letter effect, we advanced an attentional-disengagement model that is rooted in how attention is allocated to and disengaged from lexical items during reading, which we have recently shown applies equally to listening.

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Can skilled readers perform a second task in parallel? A functional connectivity MRI study

Cited by 11 publications

References 53 publications

The role of domain-general cognitive control in language comprehension

The role of domain-general cognitive control in language comprehension

Syntactic processing is distributed across the language system

What a Simple Letter-Detection Task Can Tell Us About Cognitive Processes in Reading

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