Functional neuroanatomy of language without speech: An ALE meta‐analysis of sign language

Trettenbrein, Patrick C.; Papitto, Giorgio; Friederici, Angela D.; Zaccarella, Emiliano

doi:10.1002/hbm.25254

Cited by 55 publications

(76 citation statements)

References 94 publications

(169 reference statements)

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“…Our findings are in line with recent models implicating these posterior portions of temporal lobe in phrase structure building (Flick and Pylkkänen, 2020; Matchin and Hickok, 2020; Murphy, 2018, 2020), a recent meta-analysis of sign language implicating TOJ and pMTG/pSTS in comprehension (Trettenbrein et al, 2020), and the finding that cross-linguistic (French and Chinese) reading competence is linked to pSTS (Feng et al, 2020), contributing to the neural localization of a modality-independent compositional operator (Chomsky et al, 2019; Pietroski, 2018), an essential component of language. In particular, evidence from neuroimaging and lesion-deficit mapping indicates a role for pMTG in syntactic comprehension and production (Matchin and Hickok, 2020), while pSTS has been implicated via iEEG in hierarchical syntactic computations (Nelson et al, 2017).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Minimal phrase composition revealed by intracranial recordings

Murphy

Woolnough

et al. 2021

Preprint

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The ability to comprehend meaningful phrases is an essential component of language. Here we evaluate a minimal compositional scheme – the ‘red-boat’ paradigm – using intracranial recordings to map the process of semantic composition in phrase structure comprehension. 18 human participants, implanted with penetrating depth or surface subdural intracranial electrode for the evaluation of medically refractory epilepsy, were presented with auditory recordings of adjective-noun, pseudoword-noun and adjective-pseudoword phrases before being presented with a colored drawing, and were asked to judge whether the phrase matched the object presented. Significantly greater broadband gamma activity (70-150Hz) occurred in temporo-occipital junction (TOJ) and posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG) for pseudowords over words (300-700ms post-onset) in both first- and second-word positions. Greater inter-trial phase coherence (8-12Hz) was found for words than for pseudowords in posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG). Isolating phrase structure sensitivity, we identified a portion of TOJ and posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) that showed increased gamma activity for phrase composition than for non-composition, while left anterior temporal lobe (ATL) showed greater low frequency (2-15Hz) activity for phrase composition, likely coordinating distributed semantic representations. Greater functional connectivity between pSTS-TOJ and pars triangularis, and between pSTS-TOJ and ATL, was also found for phrase composition. STG, ATL and pars triangularis were found to encode anticipation of composition in the beta band (15-30Hz), and alpha (8-12Hz) power increases in ATL were also linked to anticipation. These results indicate that pSTS-TOJ appears to be crucial hub in the network responsible for the retrieval and computation of minimal phrases, and that anticipation of such composition is encoded in fronto-temporal regions.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Minimal phrase composition revealed by intracranial recordings

Murphy

Woolnough

et al. 2021

Preprint

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“…This proposal is strengthened if one looks at the case of sign language (Trettenbrein et al 2021). This is obviously also a cultural invention, and does not involve phonemes as it is a communication means for deaf people.…”

Section: Naturalness and Evolution Of Reading And Writingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neuroscience and Literacy: An Integrative View

Ellis

Bloch

2021

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Significant challenges exist globally regarding literacy teaching and learning, particularly in poor socio-economic settings in countries of the Global South. In this paper we argue that to address these challenges, major features of how the brain works that are currently ignored in the educational literature should be taken into account. First, perception is an active process based in detection of errors in hierarchical predictions of sensory data and action outcomes. Reading is a particular case. Second, emotions play a key role in underlying cognitive functioning. Innate affective systems underlie and shape all brain functioning, including oral and written forms of language and sign. Third, there is not the fundamental difference between listening/speaking and reading/writing often alleged on the basis of evolutionary arguments. Both are socio-cultural practices driven and learnt by the communication imperative of the social brain. Fourth, like listening, reading is not a linear, bottom-up process. Both are non-linear contextually shaped psycho-social processes of understanding, shaped by current knowledge and cultural contexts and practices. Reductionist neuroscience studies which focus on decontextualized parts of reading cannot access all the relevant processes. An integrated view of brain function reflecting this non-linear nature implies that an ongoing focus on personal meaning and understanding provides positive conditions for all aspects of literacy learning. Assessment of literacy teaching at all its stages should include indicators that take into account these foundational features relating reading and writing to neuroscience.

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“…This theoretical interest has been accompanied by an upsurge of psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic studies on sign language processing in different labs around the world, thus contributing to a deeper level of understanding of the human capacity for language. These studies have revealed important similarities and differences between modalities with regard to both psychological processes (Gutiérrez, Müller, Baus, & Carreiras, 2012;Gutiérrez, Williams, Grosvald, & Corina, 2012;Hosemann, Herrmann, Sennhenn-Reulen, Schlesewsky, & Steinbach, 2018;Vinson, Thompson, Skinner, Fox, & Vigliocco, 2010) and the underlying neural representation (Emmorey, 2015;MacSweeney, Capek, Campbell, & Woll, 2008;Trettenbrein, Papitto, Friederici, & Zaccarella, 2021). Reaction time studies, eye tracking experiments, and electroencephalography investigations of spoken and written and, more recently, sign language processing have underlined the importance of controlling for lexical variables such as frequency and age of acquisition (AoA) in psycholinguistic experiments.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psycholinguistic norms for more than 300 lexical signs in German Sign Language (DGS)

et al. 2021

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Sign language offers a unique perspective on the human faculty of language by illustrating that linguistic abilities are not bound to speech and writing. In studies of spoken and written language processing, lexical variables such as, for example, age of acquisition have been found to play an important role, but such information is not as yet available for German Sign Language (Deutsche Gebärdensprache, DGS). Here, we present a set of norms for frequency, age of acquisition, and iconicity for more than 300 lexical DGS signs, derived from subjective ratings by 32 deaf signers. We also provide additional norms for iconicity and transparency for the same set of signs derived from ratings by 30 hearing non-signers. In addition to empirical norming data, the dataset includes machine-readable information about a sign’s correspondence in German and English, as well as annotations of lexico-semantic and phonological properties: one-handed vs. two-handed, place of articulation, most likely lexical class, animacy, verb type, (potential) homonymy, and potential dialectal variation. Finally, we include information about sign onset and offset for all stimulus clips from automated motion-tracking data. All norms, stimulus clips, data, as well as code used for analysis are made available through the Open Science Framework in the hope that they may prove to be useful to other researchers: 10.17605/OSF.IO/MZ8J4

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Functional neuroanatomy of language without speech: An ALE meta‐analysis of sign language

Cited by 55 publications

References 94 publications

Minimal phrase composition revealed by intracranial recordings

Minimal phrase composition revealed by intracranial recordings

Neuroscience and Literacy: An Integrative View

Psycholinguistic norms for more than 300 lexical signs in German Sign Language (DGS)

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