title: Phonological markers of information structure: an fMRI study.
abstract: In this fMRI study we investigate the neural correlates of information structure integration during sentence comprehension in Dutch. We looked into how prosodic cues (pitch accents) that signal the information status of constituents to the listener (new information) are combined with other types of information during the unification process. The difficulty of unifying the prosodic cues into overall sentence meaning was manipulated by constructing sentences in which the pitch accent did (focus-accent agreement), and sentences in which the pitch accent did not (focus-accent disagreement) match the expectations for focus constituents of the sentence. In case of a mismatch, the load on unification processes increases. Our results show two anatomically distinct effects of focus-accent disagreement, one located in the posterior left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG, BA6/44), and one in the more anterior-ventral LIFG (BA 47/45). Our results confirm that information structure is taken into account during unification, and imply an important role for the LIFG in unification processes, in line with previous fMRI studies.
authors.affiliation: Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Electronic address: tesvlee@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Tessa M
authors.initials: TM
authors.lastname: van Leeuwen
authors.affiliation: Department of Language and Communication, VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; The Eargroup, Herentalsebaan 75, B-2100 Antwerp-Deurne, Belgium.
authors.forename: Monique J A
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Lamers
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands; Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Karl Magnus
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Petersson
authors.affiliation: Department of Linguistics, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Carlos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Gussenhoven
authors.affiliation: Department of Linguistics, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Toni
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Rietveld
authors.affiliation: Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands; Erwin L. Hahn Institute for Magnetic Resonance Imaging, University Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany.
authors.forename: Benedikt
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Poser
authors.affiliation: Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands; Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Electronic address: peter.hagoort@donders.ru.nl.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Hagoort
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012660:Semantics; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Focus accent; Language comprehension; Left inferior frontal gyrus; Pitch accent; Reversed speech; Unification