title: 'Syntactic Perturbation' During Production Activates the Right IFG, but not Broca's Area or the ATL.
abstract: Research on the neural organization of syntax - the core structure-building component of language - has focused on Broca's area and the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) as the chief candidates for syntactic processing. However, these proposals have received considerable challenges. In order to better understand the neural basis of syntactic processing, we performed a functional magnetic resonance imaging experiment using a constrained sentence production task. We examined the BOLD response to sentence production for active and passive sentences, unstructured word lists, and syntactic perturbation. Perturbation involved cued restructuring of the planned syntax of a sentence mid utterance. Perturbation was designed to capture the effects of syntactic violations previously studied in sentence comprehension. Our experiment showed that Broca's area and the ATL did not exhibit response profiles consistent with syntactic operations - we found no increase of activation in these areas for sentences > lists or for perturbation. Syntactic perturbation activated a cortical-subcortical network including robust activation of the right inferior frontal gyrus (RIFG). This network is similar to one previously shown to be involved in motor response inhibition. We hypothesize that RIFG activation in our study and in previous studies of sentence comprehension is due to an inhibition mechanism that may facilitate efficient syntactic restructuring.
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Neuroscience of Language Laboratory, Department of Linguistics, University of Maryland, College Park MD, USA.
authors.forename: William
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Matchin
authors.affiliation: Auditory and Language Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of California, Irvine, Irvine CA, USA.
authors.forename: Gregory
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Hickok
keywords: ATL; Broca’s area; fMRI; inferior frontal gyrus; language; production; sentence processing; syntax