Frontal–posterior theta oscillations reflect memory retrieval during sentence comprehension

Meyer, Lars; Grigutsch, Maren; Schmuck, Noura; Gaston, Phoebe; Friederici, Angela D.

doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2015.06.027

Cited by 75 publications

(85 citation statements)

References 137 publications

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“…Based on these findings, it is tempting to relate theta power directly to syntactic processing, but there are a number of syntactic manipulations that do not show theta power modulations (Bastiaansen, Magyari, & Hagoort, 2010;Kielar, Meltzer, Moreno, Alain, & Bialystok, 2014), and moreover, comparable theta effects are most often found for semantic violations during sentence comprehension (Bastiaansen & Hagoort, 2015;Davidson & Indefrey, 2007;Hald, Bastiaansen, & Hagoort, 2006;Kielar et al, 2015). In fact, theta power has explicitly been linked to the retrieval of lexical-semantic information during sentence comprehension (e.g., Bastiaansen, Oostenveld, Jensen, & Hagoort, 2008;Bastiaansen, van der Linden, ter Keurs, Dijkstra, & Hagoort, 2005;Meyer, Grigutsch, Schmuck, Gaston, & Friederici, 2015).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Gender agreement violations modulate beta oscillatory dynamics during sentence comprehension: A comparison of second language learners and native speakers

et al. 2016

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For native speakers, many studies suggest a link between oscillatory neural activity in the beta frequency range and syntactic processing. For late second language (L2) learners on the other hand, the extent to which the neural architecture supporting syntactic processing is similar to or different from that of native speakers is still unclear. In a series of four experiments, we used electroencephalography to investigate the link between beta oscillatory activity and the processing of grammatical gender agreement in Dutch determiner-noun pairs, for Dutch native speakers, and for German L2 learners of Dutch. In Experiment 1 we show that for native speakers, grammatical gender agreement violations are yet another among many syntactic factors that modulate beta oscillatory activity during sentence comprehension. Beta power is higher for grammatically acceptable target words than for those that mismatch in grammatical gender with their preceding determiner. In Experiment 2 we observed no such beta modulations for L2 learners, irrespective of whether trials were sorted according to objective or subjective syntactic correctness. Experiment 3 ruled out that the absence of a beta effect for the L2 learners in Experiment 2 was due to repetition of the target nouns in objectively correct and incorrect determiner-noun pairs. Finally, Experiment 4 showed that when L2 learners are required to explicitly focus on grammatical information, they show modulations of beta oscillatory activity, comparable to those of native speakers, but only when trials are sorted according to participants' idiosyncratic lexical representations of the grammatical gender of target nouns. Together, these findings suggest that beta power in L2 learners is sensitive to violations of grammatical gender agreement, but only when the importance of grammatical information is highlighted, and only when participants' subjective lexical representations are taken into account.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Gender agreement violations modulate beta oscillatory dynamics during sentence comprehension: A comparison of second language learners and native speakers

et al. 2016

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“…For instance, theta oscillations in the auditory cortex measured by magnetoencephalography (MEG) are modulated during speech recognition when speech is comprehensible [38]. Also, when participants monitor syntactic properties in sentences and store certain relationships in memory, electroencephalography (EEG)-based theta frequencies are modulated in frontoparietal brain regions [28]. …”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It was also difficult to predict how the learned sequencing relationships would affect cortical oscillations or coupling, although some form of impact on low frequency oscillations might be expected [6, 25, 27, 28]. Moreover, we expected that phase–amplitude coupling (PAC), which can capture extrinsic influences [9, 24–28], would show evidence of either occurring in tandem or leading corresponding effects on local neurons (i.e., single neurons or populations of neurons, as measured by local field potential power at higher frequencies) during sequence processing. The results show comparable low-frequency (delta and/or theta) phase and high-gamma amplitude coupling in response to the nonsense words in population neural activity recorded directly from the human and monkey auditory cortex, which was robust even with the stimulus-driven response removed from analysis.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sequence learning modulates neural responses and oscillatory coupling in human and monkey auditory cortex

et al. 2017

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Learning complex ordering relationships between sensory events in a sequence is fundamental for animal perception and human communication. While it is known that rhythmic sensory events can entrain brain oscillations at different frequencies, how learning and prior experience with sequencing relationships affect neocortical oscillations and neuronal responses is poorly understood. We used an implicit sequence learning paradigm (an “artificial grammar”) in which humans and monkeys were exposed to sequences of nonsense words with regularities in the ordering relationships between the words. We then recorded neural responses directly from the auditory cortex in both species in response to novel legal sequences or ones violating specific ordering relationships. Neural oscillations in both monkeys and humans in response to the nonsense word sequences show strikingly similar hierarchically nested low-frequency phase and high-gamma amplitude coupling, establishing this form of oscillatory coupling—previously associated with speech processing in the human auditory cortex—as an evolutionarily conserved biological process. Moreover, learned ordering relationships modulate the observed form of neural oscillatory coupling in both species, with temporally distinct neural oscillatory effects that appear to coordinate neuronal responses in the monkeys. This study identifies the conserved auditory cortical neural signatures involved in monitoring learned sequencing operations, evident as modulations of transient coupling and neuronal responses to temporally structured sensory input.

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“…Another study by Meyer et al () varied working memory load using German stimuli in which a pronoun in the main clause matched the grammatical gender of an antecedent in the preceding sentence with different levels of embedding: single clause boundary—relatively easy to retrieve, e.g., During the rehearsal, before the concert, the conductor masc that the pianist fem irritated interrupted the prelude, and he complained —and double clause boundary—harder to retrieve, e.g., During the rehearsal, before the concert, the conductor fem that the pianist masc irritated interrupted the prelude, and he complained. The analysis found increased frontal‐midline and broadly distributed left‐hemispheric theta power in the double‐ compared to the single‐clause boundary condition.…”

Section: Antecedent Retrievalmentioning

confidence: 99%

The power of neural oscillations to inform sentence comprehension: A linguistic perspective

Prystauka

Lewis

2019

Language and Linguist. Compass

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The field of psycholinguistics is currently experiencing an explosion of interest in the analysis of neural oscillations—rhythmic brain activity synchronized at different temporal and spatial levels. Given that language comprehension relies on a myriad of processes, which are carried out in parallel in distributed brain networks, there is hope that this methodology might bring the field closer to understanding some of the more basic (spatially and temporally distributed, yet at the same time often overlapping) neural computations that support language function. In this review, we discuss existing proposals linking oscillatory dynamics in different frequency bands to basic neural computations and review relevant theories suggesting associations between band‐specific oscillations and higher‐level cognitive processes. More or less consistent patterns of oscillatory activity related to certain types of linguistic processing can already be derived from the evidence that has accumulated over the past few decades. The centerpiece of the current review is a synthesis of such patterns grouped by linguistic phenomenon. We restrict our review to evidence linking measures of oscillatory power to the comprehension of sentences, as well as linguistically (and/or pragmatically) more complex structures. For each grouping, we provide a brief summary and a table of associated oscillatory signatures that a psycholinguist might expect to find when employing a particular linguistic task. Summarizing across different paradigms, we conclude that a handful of basic neural oscillatory mechanisms are likely recruited in different ways and at different times for carrying out a variety of linguistic computations.

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Frontal–posterior theta oscillations reflect memory retrieval during sentence comprehension

Cited by 75 publications

References 137 publications

Gender agreement violations modulate beta oscillatory dynamics during sentence comprehension: A comparison of second language learners and native speakers

Gender agreement violations modulate beta oscillatory dynamics during sentence comprehension: A comparison of second language learners and native speakers

Sequence learning modulates neural responses and oscillatory coupling in human and monkey auditory cortex

The power of neural oscillations to inform sentence comprehension: A linguistic perspective

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