Sequential processing of lexical, grammatical, and phonological information within Broca's area.

ABSTRACT: Words, grammar, and phonology are linguistically distinct, yet their neural substrates are difficult to distinguish in macroscopic brain regions. We investigated whether they can be separated in time and space at the circuit level using intracranial electrophysiology (ICE), namely by recording local field potentials from populations of neurons using electrodes implanted in language-related brain regions while people read words verbatim or grammatically inflected them (present/past or singular/plural). Neighboring probes within Broca's area revealed distinct neuronal activity for lexical (approximately 200 milliseconds), grammatical (approximately 320 milliseconds), and phonological (approximately 450 milliseconds) processing, identically for nouns and verbs, in a region activated in the sa

SUBMITTER: Sahin NT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4030760 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature