title: Direct brain recordings reveal hippocampal rhythm underpinnings of language processing.
abstract: Language is classically thought to be supported by perisylvian cortical regions. Here we provide intracranial evidence linking the hippocampal complex to linguistic processing. We used direct recordings from the hippocampal structures to investigate whether theta oscillations, pivotal in memory function, track the amount of contextual linguistic information provided in sentences. Twelve participants heard sentences that were either constrained ("She locked the door with the") or unconstrained ("She walked in here with the") before presentation of the final word ("key"), shown as a picture that participants had to name. Hippocampal theta power increased for constrained relative to unconstrained contexts during sentence processing, preceding picture presentation. Our study implicates hippocampal theta oscillations in a language task using natural language associations that do not require memorization. These findings reveal that the hippocampal complex contributes to language in an active fashion, relating incoming words to stored semantic knowledge, a necessary process in the generation of sentence meaning.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720; Radboud University, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, Donders Centre for Cognition, 6525HR, Nijmegen, The Netherlands; Radboud University Medical Center, Department of Medical Psychology, 6525EX, Nijmegen, The Netherlands; v.piai@donders.ru.nl.
authors.forename: Vitória
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-4860-5952
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Piai
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720.
authors.forename: Kristopher L
authors.initials: KL
authors.lastname: Anderson
authors.affiliation: Comprehensive Epilepsy Center, Department of Neurology, University of California, Irvine, CA 92868.
authors.forename: Jack J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720.
authors.forename: Callum
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Dewar
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Behavioral and Cognitive Neurology, Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, Human Intracranial Cognitive Electrophysiology Program (SHICEP), Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94304.
authors.forename: Josef
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Parvizi
authors.affiliation: Center for Aphasia and Related Disorders, Veterans Affairs Northern California Health Care System, Martinez, CA 94553; Department of Neurology, University of California, Davis, CA 95817; Neurolinguistics Laboratory, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russian Federation, 101000.
authors.forename: Nina F
authors.initials: NF
authors.lastname: Dronkers
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720.
authors.forename: Robert T
authors.initials: RT
authors.lastname: Knight
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012660:Semantics; D013826:Theta Rhythm / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors; D014825:Vocabulary
keywords: recollection; relational memory; semantic memory; sentence completion; word production