Abstract
This study attempts to specify the contribution of two subregions of Broca’s area during syntactic and semantic processing of sentences by examining brain activation in a grammaticality judgment task. The processing of two types of ungrammatical sentences was examined. One type leaves the thematic interpretation generally unaffected, by violating the noun–verb agreement in number, while the other type introduces an extraneous verb, which cannot be incorporated into the developing thematic structure. Pars triangularis was more sensitive to the extra verb violation, whereas pars opercularis was more sensitive to the noun–verb agreement violation. The current study adds to the growing literature that suggests there are separable functional subregions of Broca’s area, with pars triangularis more involved in thematic processing and pars opercularis more involved in syntactic processing. The posterior left temporal area was also involved in both types of processing.
Highlights
The neural basis of syntactic processing has been examined through lesion studies and recently with the use of functional neuroimaging
Evidence from these studies suggests that syntactic processes are supported, at least in part, by the left inferior frontal gyrus, or Broca’s area [7,8,9,10,13,17,19,22,23,41]. (Note that the posterior left temporal area was implicated in most studies, so the inferior frontal area is not the sole seat of syntactic processing)
With more complex center-embedded sentences and found increased blood flow in the left pars opercularis during the more complex sentences [41]. These findings were generally replicated in another study by the same group with auditory presentation in which subjects judged the plausibility of cleft–subject and more complex cleft–object sentences, except that the activation was in pars triangularis rather than pars opercularis [8]. These studies clearly implicate the inferior frontal gyrus in syntactic processing, there is no convergence on a particular location, perhaps in part because of the differences in particular tasks and image subtractions
Summary
The neural basis of syntactic processing has been examined through lesion studies and recently with the use of functional neuroimaging Evidence from these studies suggests that syntactic processes are supported, at least in part, by the left inferior frontal gyrus, or Broca’s area [7,8,9,10,13,17,19,22,23,41]. A plausibility judgment task contrasted syntactically simpler right-branching sentences with more complex center-embedded sentences and found increased blood flow in the left pars opercularis during the more complex sentences [41] These findings were generally replicated in another study by the same group with auditory presentation in which subjects judged the plausibility of cleft–subject and more complex cleft–object sentences, except that the activation was in pars triangularis rather than pars opercularis [8]. These studies clearly implicate the inferior frontal gyrus in syntactic processing, there is no convergence on a particular location, perhaps in part because of the differences in particular tasks and image subtractions
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