Language comprehension interrupted: Both language errors and word degradation activate Broca’s area

• Published in: Brain and language Vol. 126; no. 3; pp. 291 - 301
• Main Authors: van de Meerendonk, Nan, Rueschemeyer, Shirley-Ann, Kolk, Herman H.J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier Inc 01.09.2013; Elsevier
• Subjects: Anatomical correlates of behavior; Behavioral psychophysiology; Biological and medical sciences; Cognition - physiology; Cognitive control; Comprehension - physiology; Electroencephalography; Female; Frontal Lobe - physiology; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; Language; Left inferior frontal gyrus; Male; Miscellaneous; Plausibility violations; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Representational conflict; Stroop Test; Syntactic agreement violations; Visual degradation; Young Adult; Left inferior frontal gyrus; Plausibility violations; Language; Representational conflict; Syntactic agreement violations; Visual degradation; Cognitive control; Human; Verbal comprehension; Word; Central nervous system; Cognition; Frontal cortex; Experimental study; Grammatical agreement; Area Broca; Encephalon; Degradation; Conflict; Vision; Functional magnetic resonance imaging; Perception; Syntax
• ISSN: 0093-934X; 1090-2155
• DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2013.07.004

•Representational conflicts due to syntactic and plausibility errors activate lIFG.•Conflicts due to language errors elicit similar lIFG activity as Stroop conflict.•Visual degradation co-localizes in lIFG with language errors and Stroop conflict.•lIFG implements control adjustments to resolve situations that need extra attention. The proposal of a general conflict resolution mechanism in lIFG was investigated further in relation to language errors. In an fMRI study participants read sentences containing syntactic and plausibility violations. Furthermore, they were presented with sentences that were difficult to comprehend, due to degradation of the bottom-up signal (i.e., the visual form) of the language. We were interested whether comprehension difficulties caused by degradation would activate cognitive control mechanisms in the same manner as other language violations. To localize cognitive control processes participants performed a Stroop task. Both the violations and the visual degradation condition elicited co-localized lIFG activation with the Stroop conflict. These results indicate that lIFG implements control adjustments to resolve situations in which extra attention is needed more generally. Next to biasing attention to resolve representational conflicts arising from different types of errors, lIFG may also adjust control to compensate for a temporary lack of bottom–up information.