title: Vascular responses to syntactic processing: event-related fMRI study of relative clauses.
abstract: Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to investigate the localization of syntactic processing in sentence comprehension. Matched pairs of sentences containing identical lexical items were compared. One member of the pair consisted of a syntactically simpler sentence, containing a subject relativized clause. The second member of the pair consisted of a syntactically more complex sentence, containing an object relativized clause. Ten subjects made plausibility judgments about the sentences, which were presented one word at a time on a computer screen. There was an increase in BOLD hemodynamic signal in response to the presentation of all sentences compared to fixation in both right and left occipital cortex, the left perisylvian cortex, and the left premotor and motor areas. BOLD signal increased in the left angular gyrus when subjects processed the complex portion of syntactically more complex sentences. This study shows that a hemodynamic response associated with processing the syntactically complex portions of a sentence can be localized to one part of the dominant perisylvian association cortex.
authors.affiliation: Neuropsychology Laboratory, Department of Neurology, Vincent Burnham 827, Massachusetts General Hospital, Fruit Street, Boston, MA 02114, USA. Caplan@helix.mgh.harvard.edu
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Caplan
authors.forename: Sujith
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Vijayan
authors.forename: Gina
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Kuperberg
authors.forename: Caroline
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: West
authors.forename: Gloria
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Waters
authors.forename: Doug
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Greve
authors.forename: Anders M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Dale
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001519:Behavior; D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000098:blood supply / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D003626:Data Display; D006801:Humans; D007807:Language Tests; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011930:Reaction Time; D011932:Reading; D014705:Verbal Behavior / Q000502:physiology*