Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience (CFIN), Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
Sano Private Hospital, Skaelskør, Denmark.
Psychophysiology. 2020 May;57(5):e13543. doi: 10.1111/psyp.13543. Epub 2020 Feb 14.
Assessing the brain activity related to language comprehension is required in a range of situations. Particularly in cases when subjects' cooperation with instructions cannot be guaranteed (e.g., in neurological patients), a protocol is needed that could be independent from attention and behavioral tasks. In this study, we aimed at designing a novel approach for neuromagnetic recordings of brain activity which could allow for probing the neural foundations underpinning three key levels of speech comprehension: lexical, semantic, and (morpho)syntactic, without requiring active attention on speech input or any active task, while keeping the recording session duration as short as possible. To this end, we designed two different auditory paradigms using the same set of single word-based lexical, semantic, and syntactic contrasts: a modified version of the multifeature oddball paradigm and an equiprobable design. Combined magnetoencephalography/electroencephalography data were recorded form young, healthy participants, presented with these stimuli while watching a silent movie. Data from the equiprobable design yielded significant activations in temporal and inferior frontal areas associated with the lexical, semantic, and morphosyntactic contrasts. In turn, neural dissociations observed in the multifeature paradigm emerged mainly in temporal cortices, and were confined to the lexical and semantic conditions with a striking lack of any statistically significant effects for syntactic violations. Our findings indicate that, by employing the equiprobable design, a comprehensive range of key linguistic processes could be assessed in a passive, attention-free manner within a relatively short time (here, ~27 min), thus making this paradigm a time-efficient and patient-friendly tool.
评估与语言理解相关的大脑活动在多种情况下都是必要的。特别是在受试者无法保证配合指令的情况下（例如，在神经患者中），需要一种可以独立于注意力和行为任务的方案。在这项研究中，我们旨在设计一种新的方法，用于进行脑磁图记录，以探测支持言语理解三个关键层次（词汇、语义和（形态）句法）的神经基础，而无需对言语输入或任何主动任务进行主动关注，同时尽可能缩短记录会话的持续时间。为此，我们设计了两种不同的听觉范式，使用相同的基于单个单词的词汇、语义和句法对比集：多特征Oddball 范式的修改版和等概率设计。来自年轻健康参与者的结合脑磁图/脑电图数据记录，当他们观看无声电影时，这些参与者被呈现这些刺激。等概率设计的数据在与词汇、语义和形态句法对比相关的颞叶和额下回区域产生了显著的激活。相比之下，多特征范式中观察到的神经分离主要出现在颞叶皮质中，并且仅限于词汇和语义条件，而句法违规的任何统计学上显著影响都明显缺乏。我们的研究结果表明，通过采用等概率设计，可以在相对较短的时间内（此处约 27 分钟）以被动、无需注意力的方式评估一系列关键的语言过程，从而使这种范式成为一种高效且对患者友好的工具。
