How the brain attunes to sentence processing: Relating behavior, structure, and function.

ABSTRACT: Unlike other aspects of language comprehension, the ability to process complex sentences develops rather late in life. Brain maturation as well as verbal working memory (vWM) expansion have been discussed as possible reasons. To determine the factors contributing to this functional development, we assessed three aspects in different age-groups (5-6 years, 7-8 years, and adults): first, functional brain activity during the processing of increasingly complex sentences; second, brain structure in language-related ROIs; and third, the behavioral comprehension performance on complex sentences and the performance on an independent vWM test. At the whole-brain level, brain functional data revealed a qualitatively similar neural network in children and adults including the left pars opercularis (P

SUBMITTER: Fengler A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4819595 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature