1 vote

Cortical activity modulation of language processing by dynamic optimization of task complexity and functional restrictions

Shantanu Ghosh¹, Amrita Basu², Subash Khushu³ & Senthil S. Kumaran⁴

Correspondence: (Login to view email address)

1. Department of Humanities and Social Science, Indian Institute of Technology
2. Center of Linguistics, Jawaharlal Nehru University
3. Department of NMR, Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences
4. Department of NMR, All India Institute of Medical Sciences

PDF (640.1 KB)

Document Type:

Manuscript

Date:

Received 04 November 2009 08:56 UTC; Posted 04 November 2009

Subjects:

Neuroscience

Tags:

• fMRI
• Language networks
• Cortical pathways
• neuroscience
• language processing
• language
• cortical specialization
• structural-functional relationship
• thematic role assignment

Abstract:

Language, regarded as a hierarchical cognitive code activated by functional operational modes of the brain by most neuropsychologists, is characterized by increased cognitive load in successively higher levels of processing. Language comprehension is posited to be executed through symbolic-iconic information being encoded neurally as modulated phenomena, and can be studied in vivo by functional brain imaging. Using a lexical decision-making task in conjunction with syntactic error correction that effectively isolated the regulatory neural substrate of processing structural-functional information, and minimizing the possible confounds of gender and proficiency, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was performed on bilingual volunteers to ascertain the attentional modulation of second language lexical and sentence processing. Our results indicate that while a right posterior cingulate gyrus-precuneus-lingual gyrus-cerebellar loop processes lexical information, the left inferior and middle frontal cortices are critically involved in the implementation of a structural-functional decision-making procedural loop in mediating second language comprehension.

Discussion

Votes:

1 vote

(Login to vote)

Comments:

0 comments

(Login to post a comment)

Share:

(Login to share with a colleague)

Additional information

License:

This document is licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

How to cite this document:

Ghosh, Shantanu, Basu, Amrita, Khushu, Subash, and Kumaran, Senthil. Cortical activity modulation of language processing by dynamic optimization of task complexity and functional restrictions. Available from Nature Precedings <http://hdl.handle.net/10101/npre.2009.3941.1> (2009)

Version info:

Other versions of this document in Nature Precedings

None.

Other versions of this document elsewhere on the web

None known.

Submit a new version link