Predication Drives Verb Cortical Signatures (original) (raw)
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Cortical signatures of noun and verb production
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2006
Categories like ''noun'' and ''verb'' represent the basic units of grammar in all human languages, and the retrieval of categorical information associated with words is an essential step in the production of grammatical speech. Studies of brain-damaged patients suggest that knowledge of nouns and verbs can be spared or impaired selectively; however, the neuroanatomical correlates of this dissociation are not well understood. We used event-related functional MRI to identify cortical regions that were active when English-speaking subjects produced nouns or verbs in the context of short phrases. Two regions, in the left prefrontal cortex and left superior parietal lobule, were selectively activated for verb trials compared with noun trials; one region in the left inferior temporal lobe was more active during noun production than verb production. We propose that these regions are involved in representing core conceptual properties of nouns and verbs.
Neural Correlates of Nouns and Verbs
2010
Previous neuroimaging research indicates that English verbs and nouns are represented in frontal and posterior brain regions, respectively. For Chinese monolinguals, however, nouns and verbs are found to be associated with a wide range of overlapping areas without significant differences in neural signatures. This different pattern of findings led us to ask the question of where nouns and verbs of two different languages are represented in various areas in the brain in Chinese–English bilinguals. In this study, we utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and a lexical decision paradigm involving Chinese and English verbs and nouns to address this question. We found that while Chinese nouns and verbs involved activation of common brain areas, the processing of English verbs engaged many more regions than did the processing of English nouns. Specifically, compared to English nouns, English verb presentation was associated with stronger activation of the left putamen and c...
Nouns and Verbs in the Brain: Implications of linguistic typology for cognitive neuroscience
In recent years, cognitive neuroscience has generated many important findings about how the noun–verb distinction is implemented in the brain, but at the same time it has largely ignored equally important advances in linguistic typology concerning the nature of grammatical categories. Following the lead of Evans and Levinson (2009), we argue that typological data and theory have significant implications not only for the interpretation of recent neuroscientific discoveries about the noun–verb distinction, but also for the direction of future neuroscientific research on this topic.
Neural correlates of verb argument structure processing
Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 2007
& Neuroimaging and lesion studies suggest that processing of word classes, such as verbs and nouns, is associated with distinct neural mechanisms. Such studies also suggest that subcategories within these broad word class categories are differentially processed in the brain. Within the class of verbs, argument structure provides one linguistic dimension that distinguishes among verb exemplars, with some requiring more complex argument structure entries than others. This study examined the neural instantiation of verbs by argument structure complexity: one-, two-, and three-argument verbs. Stimuli of each type, along with nouns and pseudowords, were presented for lexical decision using an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging design. Results for 14 young normal participants indicated largely overlapping activation maps for verbs and nouns, with no areas of significant activation for verbs compared to nouns, or vice versa. Pseudowords also engaged neural tissue overlapping with that for both word classes, with more widespread activation noted in visual, motor, and peri-sylvian regions. Examination of verbs by argument structure revealed activation of the supramarginal and angular gyri, limited to the left hemisphere only when verbs with two obligatory arguments were compared to verbs with a single argument. However, bilateral activation was noted when both two-and three-argument verbs were compared to one-argument verbs. These findings suggest that posterior peri-sylvian regions are engaged for processing argument structure information associated with verbs, with increasing neural tissue in the inferior parietal region associated with increasing argument structure complexity. These findings are consistent with processing accounts, which suggest that these regions are crucial for semantic integration. & D
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 2011
In the past 30 years there has been a growing body of research using different methods (behavioural, electrophysiological, neuropsychological, TMS and imaging studies) asking whether processing words from different grammatical classes (especially nouns and verbs) engage different neural systems. To date, however, each line of investigation has provided conflicting results. Here we present a review of this literature, showing that once we take into account the confounding in most studies between semantic distinctions (objects vs. actions) and grammatical distinction (nouns vs. verbs), and the conflation between studies concerned with mechanisms of single word processing and those studies concerned with sentence integration, the emerging picture is relatively clear-cut: clear neural separability is observed between the processing of object words (nouns) and action words (typically verbs), grammatical class effects emerge or become stronger for tasks and languages imposing greater processing demands. These findings indicate that grammatical class per se is not an organisational principle of knowledge in the brain; rather, all the findings we review are compatible with two general principles described by typological linguistics as underlying grammatical class membership across languages: semantic/pragmatic, and distributional cues in language that distinguish nouns from verbs. These two general principles are incorporated within an emergentist view which takes these constraints into account.
Dissociating neural correlates for nouns and verbs
Neuroimage, 2005
Dissociations in the ability to produce words of different grammatical categories are well established in neuropsychology but have not been corroborated fully with evidence from brain imaging. Here we report on a PET study designed to reveal the anatomical correlates of grammatical processes involving nouns and verbs. German-speaking subjects were asked to produce either plural and singular nouns, or first-person plural and singular verbs. Verbs, relative to nouns, activated a left frontal cortical network, while the opposite contrast (nouns-verbs) showed greater activation in temporal regions bilaterally. Similar patterns emerged when subjects performed the task with pseudowords used as nouns or as verbs. These results converge with findings from lesion studies and suggest that grammatical category is an important dimension of organization for knowledge of language in the brain. D
Neural correlates of noun and verb production
2005
Dissociations in the ability to produce words of different grammatical categories are well established in neuropsychology but have not been corroborated fully with evidence from brain imaging. Here we report on a PET study designed to reveal the anatomical correlates of grammatical processes involving nouns and verbs. German-speaking subjects were asked to produce either plural and singular nouns, or first-person plural and singular verbs. Verbs, relative to nouns, activated a left frontal cortical network, while the opposite contrast (nouns-verbs) showed greater activation in temporal regions bilaterally. Similar patterns emerged when subjects performed the task with pseudowords used as nouns or as verbs. These results converge with findings from lesion studies and suggest that grammatical category is an important dimension of organization for knowledge of language in the brain. D
Argument Structure and Morphological Factors in Noun and Verb Processing: An fMRI Study
PLoS ONE, 2012
In a functional MRI (fMRI) study, we have investigated the grammatical categories of object noun, event noun and verb in order to assess the cortical regions of activation supporting their processing. Twelve Italian healthy participants performed a lexical decision task. They had to decide whether a string was an Italian word or not. Words could be objects like medaglia (medal), or events like the noun pianto (cry); or the verb dormire (to sleep). Noun and verb comparison shows differences in regions of activation in the left Inferior Frontal cortex and in the extent of the same areas. We have found specific areas of activation for object noun, and similarities in the pattern of activation for event noun and verb. The activations induced by pseudowords highly resembled the areas activated by the corresponding word category. The implications of the results are discussed in light of the recent debate on the role of grammatical category in the brain.
The Neural Correlates of Linguistic Distinctions: Unaccusative and Unergative Verbs
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2010
Unaccusative verbs like fall are special in that their sole argument is syntactically generated at the object position of the verb, rather than at the subject position. Unaccusative verbs are derived by a lexical operation that reduces the agent from transitive verbs. Their insertion into a sentence often involves a syntactic movement from the object to the subject position. In order to explore the neurological reality of the distinction between different verb types and identify the cortical activations associated with the lexical and syntactic operations, we compared unaccusative verbs with verbs that do not undergo such operations-unergatives (verbs with one argument, an agent) and transitives (verbs with two arguments). The observed pattern of activation revealed that the brain distinguishes between unaccusative and unergative verbs, lending neurological support for the linguistic distinction. A conjunction analysis between the comparisons between unaccusatives and the other verb types revealed activations in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and the left posterior middle temporal gyrus (MTG). These, together with previous neuroimaging results, suggest that the IFG may be involved with the execution of the syntactic operation, whereas the MTG may be responsible for the lexical operation that derives unaccusative verbs.