The role of the posterior superior temporal cortex in sentence comprehension.

Full Abstract

The study investigates to what extent the posterior superior temporal cortex is involved in processing complex sentences. Using functional MRI, we show that hierarchically structured sentences activate the superior temporal cortex bilaterally to greater extent than sentences with a linear structure. The activation in the left hemisphere comprises the superior temporal gyrus and sulcus, whereas the activation in the right hemisphere is confined to the superior temporal sulcus. As earlier studies using similar syntactic structures in semantic-free grammars did not show activation in the superior temporal cortex but instead only in the prefrontal cortex, we conclude that the role of the posterior superior temporal cortex is to integrate lexical-semantic and syntactic information during sentence comprehension.

Author information

Author/s: Friederici, Angela D (AD); Makuuchi, Michiru (M); Bahlmann, Jörg (J);

Affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany. angelafr(-atsign-)cbs.mpg.de

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Neuroreport (Neuroreport), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2009-Apr; vol 20 (issue 6) : pp 563-8

Dates: Created 2009/04/13; Completed 2009/06/16;

PMID: 19287322, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 6/16/2009, IMS Date: )

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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