The role of domain-general cognitive control in language comprehension

Fedorenko, Evelina

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00335

Cited by 194 publications

(193 citation statements)

References 284 publications

(343 reference statements)

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“…More generally, MD regions respond to diverse executive tasks (e.g., Duncan & Owen, 2001; Corbetta & Shulman, 2002; Duncan, 2010; Fedorenko et al , 2013) across many domains, including language (e.g., Rodd, Davis, & Johnsrude, 2005; Novais-Santos et al , 2007; January, Trueswell, & Thompson-Schill, 2009; McMillan, Clark, Gunawardena, Ryant, & Grossman, 2012; McMillan et al , 2013; Nieuwland, Martin, & Carreiras, 2012; Wild et al , 2012). An important goal for future work is thus to understand the division of labor between language and MD regions during syntactic processing (see also Fedorenko, 2014, for discussion). For example, which regions exhibit sensitivity to syntactic complexity earlier?…”

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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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Syntactic processing is distributed across the language system

et al. 2016

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“…It is possible that the visual-biased network may merge into what is referred to as the ‘multiple-demand’ network (Fedorenko et al, 2013; Fedorenko 2014), although sPCS and iPCS exhibit a strong bias for the attended sensory modality and thus fail to meet the strong definition of domain-general cortex. Another prominent view of lateral frontal cortical organization is that there is a rostral-caudal gradient of hierarchical processing (Koechlin et al, 2003; Badre 2008; Badre and D’Esposito 2009).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sensory-biased attention networks in human lateral frontal cortex revealed by intrinsic functional connectivity

et al. 2017

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Human frontal cortex is commonly described as being insensitive to sensory modality, however several recent studies cast doubt on this view. Our laboratory previously reported two visual-biased attention regions interleaved with two auditory-biased attention regions bilaterally within lateral frontal cortex. These regions selectively formed functional networks with posterior visual-biased and auditory-biased attention regions. Here, we conducted a series of functional connectivity analyses to validate and expand this analysis to 469 subjects from the Human Connectome Project (HCP). Functional connectivity analyses replicated the original findings and revealed a novel hemispheric connectivity bias. We also subdivided lateral frontal cortex into 21 thin-slice ROIs and observed bilateral patterns of spatially alternating visual-biased and auditory-biased attention network connectivity. Finally, we performed a correlation difference analysis that revealed five additional bilateral lateral frontal regions differentially connected to either the visual-biased or auditory-biased attention networks. These findings leverage the HCP dataset to demonstrate that sensory-biased attention networks may have widespread influence in lateral frontal cortical organization.

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“…In addition to increased activation within domain-specific components of the language network implicated in phonological and orthographic processing, the greater task difficulty and cognitive effort associated with reading novel nonwords is also reflected by the engagement of domain-general frontoparietal networks involved in selective attention and executive control (Binder et al, 2005; Graves et al, 2010; Ihnen, Petersen, & Schlaggar, 2015). Components of this (bilateral) multi-demand frontoparietal system include regions within dorsal and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (e.g., inferior frontal junction), intraparietal sulcus (IPS), and anterior cingulate gyrus (Fedorenko, 2014; Fedorenko, Duncan, & Kanwisher, 2013; Vincent, Kahn, Snyder, Raichle, & Buckner, 2008). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural substrates of sublexical processing for spelling

et al. 2017

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We used fMRI to examine the neural substrates of sublexical phoneme-grapheme conversion during spelling in a group of healthy young adults. Participants performed a writing-to-dictation task involving irregular words (e.g., choir), plausible nonwords (e.g., kroid), and a control task of drawing familiar geometric shapes (e.g., squares). Written production of both irregular words and nonwords engaged a left-hemisphere perisylvian network associated with reading/spelling and phonological processing skills. Effects of lexicality, manifested by increased activation during nonword relative to irregular word spelling, were noted in anterior perisylvian regions (posterior inferior frontal gyrus/operculum/precentral gyrus/insula), and in left ventral occipito-temporal cortex. In addition to enhanced neural responses within domain-specific components of the language network, the increased cognitive demands associated with spelling nonwords engaged domain-general frontoparietal cortical networks involved in selective attention and executive control. These results elucidate the neural substrates of sublexical processing during written language production and complement lesion-deficit correlation studies of phonological agraphia.

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The role of domain-general cognitive control in language comprehension

Cited by 194 publications

References 284 publications

Syntactic processing is distributed across the language system

Syntactic processing is distributed across the language system

Sensory-biased attention networks in human lateral frontal cortex revealed by intrinsic functional connectivity

Neural substrates of sublexical processing for spelling

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