Left inferior frontal lesions impair syntactic predictions at the sensory level

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Left inferior frontal lesions impair syntactic predictions at the sensory level Anna S. Hasting1*, Maria Jakuszeit1 and Sonja A. Kotz1 1 MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Germany Recent event-related EEG and MEG studies have shown that the detection of syntactic errors in spoken and written language coincides with sensory processes in the 100 ms range both temporally (e.g. Hasting & Kotz, 2008) and spatially (e.g. Herrmann et al., 2009). It has further been shown that sensory cortices are indeed sensitive to certain syntactic cues (Dikker et al., 2009). The present study aims to clarify whether such early sensory syntactic processing is based on syntactic rule representations within the sensory cortices, or whether it reflects rapid mismatch responses that are enabled by top-down syntactic predictions at the sensory level. The left inferior frontal cortex has frequently been found to serve syntactic functions (e.g. Friederici & Kotz, 2003) and is therefore a prime candidate region for the generation of syntactic predictions. We tested 10 patients with left inferior frontal lesions but intact temporal cortices in a passive auditory event-related potential (ERP) paradigm that had reliably elicited early grammaticality effects in the past (Hasting & Kotz, 2008). Neither word category violations nor subject-verb agreement violations elicited early grammaticality effects in these patients, whereas a group of 10 age-matched controls showed reliable negativities in response to both violation types (150 - 250 ms and 100 - 300 ms, respectively). These results show that intact auditory cortices and surrounding temporal regions do not suffice to generate early syntax-specific ERP effects. They rather suggest that early sensory aspects of syntactic analysis critically depend on top-down predictions generated by the left-inferior frontal cortex. Keywords: EEG, Language Conference: XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI), Palma, Mallorca, Spain, 25 Sep - 29 Sep, 2011. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Poster Sessions: Neural Bases of Language Citation: Hasting AS, Jakuszeit M and Kotz SA (2011). Left inferior frontal lesions impair syntactic predictions at the sensory level. Conference Abstract: XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI). doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2011.207.00510 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 22 Nov 2011; Published Online: 28 Nov 2011. * Correspondence: Dr. Anna S Hasting, MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany, hasting@cbs.mpg.de Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Anna S Hasting Maria Jakuszeit Sonja A Kotz Google Anna S Hasting Maria Jakuszeit Sonja A Kotz Google Scholar Anna S Hasting Maria Jakuszeit Sonja A Kotz PubMed Anna S Hasting Maria Jakuszeit Sonja A Kotz Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.