Oscillatory Brain Dynamics during Sentence Reading: A Fixation-Related Spectral Perturbation Analysis

Abstract

The present study investigated oscillatory brain dynamics during self-paced sentence-level processing. Participants read fully correct sentences, sentences containing a semantic violation and “sentences” in which the order of the words was randomized. At the target word level, fixations on semantically unrelated words elicited a lower-beta band (13–18 Hz) desynchronization. At the sentence level, gamma power (31–55 Hz) increased linearly for syntactically correct sentences, but not when the order of the words was randomized. In the 300–900 ms time window after sentence onsets, theta power (4–7 Hz) was greater for syntactically correct sentences as compared to sentences where no syntactic structure was preserved (random words condition). We interpret our results as conforming with a recently formulated predictive-coding framework for oscillatory neural dynamics during sentence-level language comprehension. Additionally, we discuss how our results relate to previous findings with serial visual presentation vs. self-paced reading.

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

“…Delta and theta findings reported in Peña and Melloni (2012) and Mai et al (2016) suggest that low-frequency oscillations are sensitive to prosodic and syllabic information, regardless of whether successful semantic and/or syntactic unification can be performed. Their effects appear to be different in nature than the theta increases reported in Bastiaansen et al (2010) and Vignali et al (2016), which only occurred in syntactically structured sentences and not word lists, and were interpreted as reflecting building of a memory trace of the unfolding linguistic input.…”

“…Indeed, Srinivasan, Winter, and Nunez () found that while EEG detected frontal alpha and theta rhythms generated during a rest period, very little of the same activity was detected with MEG. On the other hand, the EEG study by Vignali et al () did not observe increased theta. The absence of a theta effect there may however be explained by the fact that this study used a naturalistic reading paradigm with eye‐tracking rather than the rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm used in most studies reviewed so far.…”

“…Similarly, Wang et al (2018a) reported an alpha decrease but also a gamma increase in sentences with incongruent endings compared to congruent ones, as well as a correlation between the alpha power decrease in temporal language areas and a left prefrontal gamma increase (we will return to a discussion of the gamma effect later). Vignali et al (2016) also reported beta power decreases in response to semantic anomalies. All studies mentioned so far manipulated semantic congruency at a linguistic level.…”

“…Before we discuss studies which showed gamma effects, we first speculate about where some discrepancies in the results discussed so far might come from. One puzzle is why the studies by Bastiaansen and Hagoort (2015); Davidson and Indefrey (2007); Hagoort et al (2004); and Wang, Zhu, and Bastiaansen (2012) found only theta increases in response to semantic anomalies, while studies by Wang, Jensen, et al (2012); Wang et al (2018a); and Vignali et al (2016) found only alpha/beta decreases, and studies by Kielar et al (2014Kielar et al ( , 2015 found both? Some differences in the results might be explained by differences in the recording devices used to collect the electrophysiological data.…”

A Spiking Neurocomputational Model of High-Frequency Oscillatory Brain Responses to Words and Pseudowords

“…More generally, a large number of studies have documented increases in gamma-band response (GBR) amplitude during processing of meaningful words (compared to baseline) (e.g., Canolty et al, 2006; Edwards et al, 2010; Pei et al, 2011; Wu et al, 2011; Vignali et al, 2016). Most relevant to the present results, higher spectral power during processing of familiar items (words) vs. unfamiliar ones (pseudowords or non-words) has been found in English using MEG (Pulvermüller et al, 1996a) and ECoG (Canolty et al, 2007), in Finnish with EEG (Krause et al, 1998), in German with MEG (Eulitz et al, 1996), and in French, using intracortical recordings (Mainy et al, 2008), with remarkable consistency across languages, sensory modalities, and recording methods.…”