title: Sentential Negation Might Share Neurophysiological Mechanisms with Action Inhibition. Evidence from Frontal Theta Rhythm.
abstract: According to the literature, negations such as "not" or "don't" reduce the accessibility in memory of the concepts under their scope. Moreover, negations applied to action contents (e.g., "don't write the letter") impede the activation of motor processes in the brain, inducing "disembodied" representations. These facts provide important information on the behavioral and neural consequences of negations. However, how negations themselves are processed in the brain is still poorly understood. In two electrophysiological experiments, we explored whether sentential negation shares neural mechanisms with action monitoring or inhibition. Human participants read action-related sentences in affirmative or negative form ("now you will cut the bread" vs "now you will not cut the bread") while performing a simultaneous Go/NoGo task. The analysis of the EEG rhythms revealed that theta oscillations were significantly reduced for NoGo trials in the context of negative sentences compared with affirmative sentences. Given the fact that theta oscillations are often considered as neural markers of response inhibition processes, their modulation by negative sentences strongly suggests that negation uses neural resources of response inhibition. We propose a new approach that views the syntactic operator of negation as relying on the neural machinery of high-order action-monitoring processes.
  
  
  
  Previous studies have shown that linguistic negation reduces the accessibility of the negated concepts and suppresses the activation of specific brain regions that operate in affirmative statements. Although these studies focus on the consequences of negation on cognitive and neural processes, the proper neural mechanisms of negation have not yet been explored. In the present EEG study, we tested the hypothesis that negation uses the neural network of action inhibition. Using a Go/NoGo task embedded in a sentence comprehension task, we found that negation in the context of NoGo trials modulates frontal theta rhythm, which is usually considered a signature of action inhibition and control mechanisms.
authors.affiliation: Universidad de La Laguna, Campus de Guajara, 38025 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain, and mdevega@ull.es.
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-9596-1642
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: de Vega
authors.affiliation: Universidad de La Laguna, Campus de Guajara, 38025 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain, and.
authors.forename: Yurena
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-4216-3305
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Morera
authors.affiliation: Universidad de La Laguna, Campus de Guajara, 38025 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain, and.
authors.forename: Inmaculada
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: León
authors.affiliation: Universidad de La Laguna, Campus de Guajara, 38025 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain, and.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Beltrán
authors.affiliation: Center for Human Evolution and Behavior, Universidad Complutense de Madrid - Instituto de Salud Carlos III, 28029 Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Pilar
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Casado
authors.affiliation: Center for Human Evolution and Behavior, Universidad Complutense de Madrid - Instituto de Salud Carlos III, 28029 Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Martín-Loeches
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001931:Brain Mapping; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D003657:Decision Making; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004585:Electrooculography; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012660:Semantics; D013057:Spectrum Analysis; D013826:Theta Rhythm / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: electrophysiology; embodied cognition; inhibition processes; negation; theta rhythms