Roel Willems | Radboud University Nijmegen (original) (raw)
Papers by Roel Willems
Many studies have revealed shared music–language processing resources by finding an influence of ... more Many studies have revealed shared music–language processing resources by finding an influence of music harmony manipulations on concurrent language processing. However, the nature of the shared resources has remained ambiguous. They have been argued to be syntax specific and thus due to shared syntactic integration resources. An alternative view regards them as related to general attention and, thus, not specific to syntax. The present experiments evaluated these accounts by investigating the influence of language on music. Participants were asked to provide closure judgements on harmonic sequences in order to assess the appropriateness of sequence endings. At the same time participants read syntactic garden-path sentences. Closure judgements revealed a change in harmonic processing as the result of reading a syntactically challenging word. We found no influence of an arithmetic control manipulation (experiment 1) or semantic garden-path sentences (experiment 2). Our results provide behavioural evidence for a specific influence of linguistic syntax processing on musical harmony judgements. A closer look reveals that the shared resources appear to be needed to hold a harmonic key online in some form of syntactic working memory or unification workspace related to the integration of chords and words. Overall, our results support the syntax specificity of shared music–language processing resources.
This study investigated the brain regions for the comprehension of implied emotion in sentences. ... more This study investigated the brain regions for the comprehension of implied emotion in sentences. Participants read negative sentences without negative words, for example, “The boy fell asleep and never woke up again,” and their neutral counterparts “The boy stood up and grabbed his bag.” This kind of negative sentence allows us to examine implied emotion derived at the sentence level, without associative emotion coming from word retrieval. We found that implied emotion in sentences, relative to neutral sentences, led to activation in some emotion-related areas, including the medial prefrontal cortex, the amygdala, and the insula, as well as certain language-related areas, including the inferior frontal gyrus, which has been implicated in combinatorial processing. These results suggest that the emotional network involved in implied emotion is intricately related to the network for combinatorial processing in language, supporting the view that sentence meaning is more than simply concatenating the meanings of its lexical building blocks.
![Research paper thumbnail of A functional role for the motor system in language understanding: Evidence from rTMS [Abstract]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/45499081/thumbnails/1.jpg)
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The notion of prediction is studied in cognitive neuroscience with increasing intensity. We inves... more The notion of prediction is studied in cognitive neuroscience with increasing intensity. We investigated the neural basis of two distinct aspects of word prediction, derived from information theory, during story comprehension. We assessed the effect of entropy of next-word probability distributions as well as surprisal. A computational model determined entropy and surprisal for each word in three literary stories. Twenty-four healthy participants listened to the same three stories while their brain activation was measured using fMRI. Reversed speech fragments were presented as a control condition.
Brain areas sensitive to entropy were left ventral premotor cortex, left middle frontal gyrus, right inferior frontal gyrus, left inferior parietal lobule, and left supplementary motor area. Areas sensitive to surprisal were left inferior temporal sulcus (‘visual word form area’), bilateral superior temporal gyrus, right amygdala, bilateral anterior temporal poles, and right inferior frontal sulcus. We conclude that prediction during language comprehension can occur at several levels of processing, including at the level of word form. Our study exemplifies the power of combining computational linguistics with cognitive neuroscience, and additionally underlines the feasibility of studying continuous spoken language materials with fMRI.
The cognitive neuroscience of language studies the neural infrastructure underlying the comprehen... more The cognitive neuroscience of language studies the neural infrastructure underlying the comprehension and production of language. When we think of language use in our daily lives, the first things that come to mind include colloquial conversations, the small chat on your way to work, reading and writing e-mails, sending text messages, reading a book. To the surprise of outsiders, the topic of study in the cognitive neuroscience of language is rather far removed from these language-in-use examples. There are well-founded (historical) reasons for this (see below), but the current excitement in the study of language comes from new developments that make studying the neural underpinnings of naturally occurring language much more feasible.
The chapters in this book provide a state of the art overview of current approaches to making the cognitive neuroscience of language more ‘natural’ in the sense of closer to language as it occurs in real life. Before giving an overview of the book’s content, I will briefly introduce two strands of language research that approaches in this book draw upon.
When we read literary fiction, we are transported to fictional places, and we feel and think alon... more When we read literary fiction, we are transported to fictional places, and we feel and think along with the characters. Despite the importance of narrative in adult life and during development, the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying fiction comprehension are unclear. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate how individuals differently employ neural networks important for understanding others’ beliefs and intentions (mentalizing), and for sensori-motor simulation while listening to excerpts from literary novels. Localizer tasks were used to localize both the cortical motor network and the mentalizing network in participants after they listened to excerpts from literary novels. Results show that participants who had high activation in anterior medial prefrontal cortex (aMPFC; part of the mentalizing network) when listening to mentalizing content of literary fiction, had lower motor cortex activity when they listened to action-related content of the story, and vice versa. This qualifies how people differ in their engagement with fiction: some people are mostly drawn into a story by mentalizing about the thoughts and beliefs of others, whereas others engage in literature by simulating more concrete events such as actions. This study provides on-line neural evidence for the existence of qualitatively different styles of moving into literary worlds, and adds to a growing body of literature showing the potential to study narrative comprehension with neuroimaging methods.
Background An effective NMDA antagonist imaging model may find key utility in advancing schizophr... more Background An effective NMDA antagonist imaging model may find key utility in advancing schizophrenia drug discovery research. We investigated effects of subchronic treatment with the NMDA antagonist memantine by using behavioural observation and multimodal MRI. Methods Pharmacological MRI (phMRI) was used to map the neuroanatomical binding sites of memantine after acute and subchronic treatment.
Abstract Recent years have seen a large amount of empirical studies related to “embodied cognitio... more Abstract Recent years have seen a large amount of empirical studies related to “embodied cognition.” While interesting and valuable, there is something dissatisfying with the current state of affairs in this research domain. Hypotheses tend to be underspecified, testing in general terms for embodied versus disembodied processing. The lack of specificity of current hypotheses can easily lead to an erosion of the embodiment concept, and result in a situation in which essentially any effect is taken as positive evidence.
Proceedings of ESN …, Jan 1, 2008
KULeuven. ...
Frontiers in Cognition, Jan 1, 2011
Neuropsychologia, Jan 1, 2011
The Journal of neuroscience, Jan 1, 2007
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, Jan 1, 2010
The human capacity to communicate has been hypothesized to be causally dependent upon language. I... more The human capacity to communicate has been hypothesized to be causally dependent upon language. Intuitively this seems plausible since most communication relies on language. Moreover, intention recognition abilities (as a necessary prerequisite for communication) and language development seem to co-develop. Here we review evidence from neuroimaging as well as from neuropsychology to evaluate the relationship between communicative and linguistic abilities. Our review indicates that communicative abilities are best considered as neurally distinct from language abilities. This conclusion is based upon evidence showing that humans rely on different cortical systems when designing a communicative message for someone else as compared to when performing core linguistic tasks, as well as upon observations of individuals with severe language loss after extensive lesions to the language system, who are still able to perform tasks involving intention understanding.
Many studies have revealed shared music–language processing resources by finding an influence of ... more Many studies have revealed shared music–language processing resources by finding an influence of music harmony manipulations on concurrent language processing. However, the nature of the shared resources has remained ambiguous. They have been argued to be syntax specific and thus due to shared syntactic integration resources. An alternative view regards them as related to general attention and, thus, not specific to syntax. The present experiments evaluated these accounts by investigating the influence of language on music. Participants were asked to provide closure judgements on harmonic sequences in order to assess the appropriateness of sequence endings. At the same time participants read syntactic garden-path sentences. Closure judgements revealed a change in harmonic processing as the result of reading a syntactically challenging word. We found no influence of an arithmetic control manipulation (experiment 1) or semantic garden-path sentences (experiment 2). Our results provide behavioural evidence for a specific influence of linguistic syntax processing on musical harmony judgements. A closer look reveals that the shared resources appear to be needed to hold a harmonic key online in some form of syntactic working memory or unification workspace related to the integration of chords and words. Overall, our results support the syntax specificity of shared music–language processing resources.
This study investigated the brain regions for the comprehension of implied emotion in sentences. ... more This study investigated the brain regions for the comprehension of implied emotion in sentences. Participants read negative sentences without negative words, for example, “The boy fell asleep and never woke up again,” and their neutral counterparts “The boy stood up and grabbed his bag.” This kind of negative sentence allows us to examine implied emotion derived at the sentence level, without associative emotion coming from word retrieval. We found that implied emotion in sentences, relative to neutral sentences, led to activation in some emotion-related areas, including the medial prefrontal cortex, the amygdala, and the insula, as well as certain language-related areas, including the inferior frontal gyrus, which has been implicated in combinatorial processing. These results suggest that the emotional network involved in implied emotion is intricately related to the network for combinatorial processing in language, supporting the view that sentence meaning is more than simply concatenating the meanings of its lexical building blocks.
The notion of prediction is studied in cognitive neuroscience with increasing intensity. We inves... more The notion of prediction is studied in cognitive neuroscience with increasing intensity. We investigated the neural basis of two distinct aspects of word prediction, derived from information theory, during story comprehension. We assessed the effect of entropy of next-word probability distributions as well as surprisal. A computational model determined entropy and surprisal for each word in three literary stories. Twenty-four healthy participants listened to the same three stories while their brain activation was measured using fMRI. Reversed speech fragments were presented as a control condition.
Brain areas sensitive to entropy were left ventral premotor cortex, left middle frontal gyrus, right inferior frontal gyrus, left inferior parietal lobule, and left supplementary motor area. Areas sensitive to surprisal were left inferior temporal sulcus (‘visual word form area’), bilateral superior temporal gyrus, right amygdala, bilateral anterior temporal poles, and right inferior frontal sulcus. We conclude that prediction during language comprehension can occur at several levels of processing, including at the level of word form. Our study exemplifies the power of combining computational linguistics with cognitive neuroscience, and additionally underlines the feasibility of studying continuous spoken language materials with fMRI.
The cognitive neuroscience of language studies the neural infrastructure underlying the comprehen... more The cognitive neuroscience of language studies the neural infrastructure underlying the comprehension and production of language. When we think of language use in our daily lives, the first things that come to mind include colloquial conversations, the small chat on your way to work, reading and writing e-mails, sending text messages, reading a book. To the surprise of outsiders, the topic of study in the cognitive neuroscience of language is rather far removed from these language-in-use examples. There are well-founded (historical) reasons for this (see below), but the current excitement in the study of language comes from new developments that make studying the neural underpinnings of naturally occurring language much more feasible.
The chapters in this book provide a state of the art overview of current approaches to making the cognitive neuroscience of language more ‘natural’ in the sense of closer to language as it occurs in real life. Before giving an overview of the book’s content, I will briefly introduce two strands of language research that approaches in this book draw upon.
When we read literary fiction, we are transported to fictional places, and we feel and think alon... more When we read literary fiction, we are transported to fictional places, and we feel and think along with the characters. Despite the importance of narrative in adult life and during development, the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying fiction comprehension are unclear. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate how individuals differently employ neural networks important for understanding others’ beliefs and intentions (mentalizing), and for sensori-motor simulation while listening to excerpts from literary novels. Localizer tasks were used to localize both the cortical motor network and the mentalizing network in participants after they listened to excerpts from literary novels. Results show that participants who had high activation in anterior medial prefrontal cortex (aMPFC; part of the mentalizing network) when listening to mentalizing content of literary fiction, had lower motor cortex activity when they listened to action-related content of the story, and vice versa. This qualifies how people differ in their engagement with fiction: some people are mostly drawn into a story by mentalizing about the thoughts and beliefs of others, whereas others engage in literature by simulating more concrete events such as actions. This study provides on-line neural evidence for the existence of qualitatively different styles of moving into literary worlds, and adds to a growing body of literature showing the potential to study narrative comprehension with neuroimaging methods.
Background An effective NMDA antagonist imaging model may find key utility in advancing schizophr... more Background An effective NMDA antagonist imaging model may find key utility in advancing schizophrenia drug discovery research. We investigated effects of subchronic treatment with the NMDA antagonist memantine by using behavioural observation and multimodal MRI. Methods Pharmacological MRI (phMRI) was used to map the neuroanatomical binding sites of memantine after acute and subchronic treatment.
Abstract Recent years have seen a large amount of empirical studies related to “embodied cognitio... more Abstract Recent years have seen a large amount of empirical studies related to “embodied cognition.” While interesting and valuable, there is something dissatisfying with the current state of affairs in this research domain. Hypotheses tend to be underspecified, testing in general terms for embodied versus disembodied processing. The lack of specificity of current hypotheses can easily lead to an erosion of the embodiment concept, and result in a situation in which essentially any effect is taken as positive evidence.
Proceedings of ESN …, Jan 1, 2008
KULeuven. ...
Frontiers in Cognition, Jan 1, 2011
Neuropsychologia, Jan 1, 2011
The Journal of neuroscience, Jan 1, 2007
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, Jan 1, 2010
The human capacity to communicate has been hypothesized to be causally dependent upon language. I... more The human capacity to communicate has been hypothesized to be causally dependent upon language. Intuitively this seems plausible since most communication relies on language. Moreover, intention recognition abilities (as a necessary prerequisite for communication) and language development seem to co-develop. Here we review evidence from neuroimaging as well as from neuropsychology to evaluate the relationship between communicative and linguistic abilities. Our review indicates that communicative abilities are best considered as neurally distinct from language abilities. This conclusion is based upon evidence showing that humans rely on different cortical systems when designing a communicative message for someone else as compared to when performing core linguistic tasks, as well as upon observations of individuals with severe language loss after extensive lesions to the language system, who are still able to perform tasks involving intention understanding.