TY - JOUR
T1 - Left inferior frontal gyrus mediates morphosyntax
T2 - ERP evidence from verb processing in left-hemisphere damaged patients
AU - Regel, Stefanie
AU - Kotz, Sonja A.
AU - Henseler, Ilona
AU - Friederici, Angela D.
PY - 2017/1
Y1 - 2017/1
N2 - Neurocognitive models of language comprehension have proposed different mechanisms with different neural substrates mediating human language processing. Whether the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) is engaged in morpho-syntactic information processing is currently still controversially debated. The present study addresses this issue by examining the processing of irregular verb inflection in real words (e.g., swim > swum > swam) and pseudowords (e.g., frim >frum >fram) by using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in neurological patients with lesions in the LIFG involving Broca's area as well as healthy controls. Different ERP patterns in response to the grammatical violations were observed in both groups. Controls showed a biphasic negativity-P600 pattern in response to incorrect verb inflections whereas patients with LIFG lesions displayed a N400. For incorrect pseudoword inflections, a late positivity was found in controls, while no ERP effects were obtained in patients. These findings of different ERP patterns in the two groups strongly indicate an involvement of LIFG in morphosyntactic processing, thereby suggesting brain regions' specialization for different language functions.
AB - Neurocognitive models of language comprehension have proposed different mechanisms with different neural substrates mediating human language processing. Whether the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) is engaged in morpho-syntactic information processing is currently still controversially debated. The present study addresses this issue by examining the processing of irregular verb inflection in real words (e.g., swim > swum > swam) and pseudowords (e.g., frim >frum >fram) by using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in neurological patients with lesions in the LIFG involving Broca's area as well as healthy controls. Different ERP patterns in response to the grammatical violations were observed in both groups. Controls showed a biphasic negativity-P600 pattern in response to incorrect verb inflections whereas patients with LIFG lesions displayed a N400. For incorrect pseudoword inflections, a late positivity was found in controls, while no ERP effects were obtained in patients. These findings of different ERP patterns in the two groups strongly indicate an involvement of LIFG in morphosyntactic processing, thereby suggesting brain regions' specialization for different language functions.
KW - Event-related potentials (ERPs)
KW - Left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG)
KW - Broca's area (Morpho-)syntax
KW - Language processing
U2 - 10.1016/j.cortex.2016.11.007
DO - 10.1016/j.cortex.2016.11.007
M3 - Article
C2 - 28011396
SN - 0010-9452
VL - 86
SP - 156
EP - 171
JO - Cortex
JF - Cortex
ER -