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

Abstract

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.

Language–motor interference reflected in MEG beta oscillations

“…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.…”

“…Still, it is conceivable that early processing of hand and foot action verbs in the current study did activate the motor system-presumably somatotopically-just as it does in the absence of movement tasks (Hauk et al, 2004;Tettamanti et al, 2005;Kemmerer et al, 2008;Niccolai et al, 2014), but that this is obliterated by the presence of motor preparatory processes.…”

“…This served the purpose of investigating neuronal oscillations more directly associated with semantic verbal processing on the one hand, and differential modulations in the motor response preparation time-course on the other hand, which is where we expected language-motor interference to emerge. In the stimuluslocked analysis we also contrasted hand and abstract verbs to compare the current study to results of early differences between these types of stimuli from event related fields (Pulvermüller et al, 2001;Boulenger et al, 2012) and alpha/beta power modulations (van Elk et al, 2010;Moreno et al, 2013;Vukovic and Shtyrov, 2014;Niccolai et al, 2014). However, a direct comparison with previous results was impeded due to the motor task in the current study, as described above.…”

“…To control for a possible influence of the imageability of verbs, the level of imageability, which had previously been assessed in rating studies, was included in the analysis as a separate factor. In the presence of the speeded reaction time task we did not expect to see subtle oscillatory modulations in the alpha and beta band related to verbal processing in isolation (compare van Elk et al, 2010;Moreno et al, 2013;Niccolai et al, 2014). Rather, our design aimed at identifying the interaction of verb processing with the strong sensorimotor rhythms during response preparation and execution, mainly in the beta band.…”

Effortful verb retrieval from semantic memory drives beta suppression in mesial frontal regions involved in action initiation

“…Recent EEG/MEG studies of motor-language interaction in the brain employed beta ERD to characterize brain activation elicited by action verbs (Klepp, Niccolai, Buccino, Schnitzler, & Biermann-Ruben, 2015;Niccolai et al, 2014;Schaller, Weiss, & Müller, 2017;van Elk, van Schie, Zwaan, & Bekkering, 2010). Comparison of their results highlights the advantage of MEG over EEG in capturing verb-related beta oscillations (15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30) and their modulations that were previously reported for synchronous MEG and EEG recordings (Nikulin, Nikulina, Yamashita, Rossi, & Kähkönen, 2005).…”