The right posterior paravermis and the control of language interference - PubMed (original) (raw)

The right posterior paravermis and the control of language interference

Roberto Filippi et al. J Neurosci. 2011.

Abstract

Auditory and written language in humans' comprehension necessitates attention to the message of interest and suppression of interference from distracting sources. Investigating the brain areas associated with the control of interference is challenging because it is inevitable that activation of the brain regions that control interference co-occurs with activation related to interference per se. To isolate the mechanisms that control verbal interference, we used a combination of structural and functional imaging techniques in Italian and German participants who spoke English as a second language. First, we searched structural MRI images of Italian participants for brain regions in which brain structure correlated with the ability to suppress interference from the unattended dominant language (Italian) while processing heard sentences in their weaker language (English). This revealed an area in the posterior paravermis of the right cerebellum in which gray matter density was higher in individuals who were better at controlling verbal interference. Second, we found functional activation in the same region when our German participants made semantic decisions on written English words in the presence of interference from unrelated words in their dominant language (German). This combination of structural and functional imaging therefore highlights the contribution of the right posterior paravermis to the control of verbal interference. We suggest that the importance of this region for language processing has previously been missed because most fMRI studies limit the field of view to increase sensitivity, with the lower part of the cerebellum being the region most likely to be excluded.

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Figures

Figure 1

An illustration of the sentence interpretation task setup. The participant is instructed to focus on the woman’s voice (Attended Speech) and ignore the man (Competing Speech). Target and non-target sentences are presented simultaneously in both ears (diotic presentation). At the same time, two animals featured in the target sentence are shown on a computer screen. The participant must identify the animal doing the “bad action” by using their right hand fingers to press the button relative to the position of the animal on the screen (in this case the Cow=left button).

Figure 2

Participants’ percent correct responses (CR) with standard error bars in the sentence interpretation task for both canonical and non-canonical sentences in the absence of interference and in the presence of L1 (Italian) and L2 (English) interference. The regressor of interest for the structural brain imaging analysis was the ability scores that were computed by subtracting the accuracy scores in the L2 non-canonical condition with no language interference from those in the L2 non-canonical condition with L1 interference.

Figure 3

a) Structural imaging results: the highlighted area (white) shows where grey matter density is higher in those with better performance in the context of native language (L1) interference; b) Functional imaging results: the highlighted area (white) shows where activation was higher when German participants performed semantic decisions on written words in the context of interference from unrelated words in German (higher interference) versus unrelated words in English (lower interference). The coronal and axial slices are the same for the structural and functional imaging results to illustrate the proximity of the effects. The peak co-ordinates were +12, −64, −38 for the structural imaging study and +24, −60, −40 for the functional imaging study.

Figure 4

(a) Scattergram of grey matter density (y-axis) in the right cerebellum (x=+12, y+−64, z=−38) and individual task ability scores (x-axis) for controlling verbal interference in the sentence interpretation task where the target language is L2 and the interfering language is L1 (R2=0.36). (b) percent change in regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in the functional imaging study comparing semantic decisions on written words in the context of high versus low interference from words in the native (German) versus non-native (English) language.

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The right posterior paravermis and the control of language interference - PubMed (original) (raw)