Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Research Group Language Cycles, Leipzig 04103, Germany
Neurobiology of Language Department, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen 6525 XD, The Netherlands.
J Neurosci. 2023 Jun 14;43(24):4461-4469. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1849-22.2023. Epub 2023 May 19.
Neural oscillations are thought to support speech and language processing. They may not only inherit acoustic rhythms, but might also impose endogenous rhythms onto processing. In support of this, we here report that human (both male and female) eye movements during naturalistic reading exhibit rhythmic patterns that show frequency-selective coherence with the EEG, in the absence of any stimulation rhythm. Periodicity was observed in two distinct frequency bands: First, word-locked saccades at 4-5 Hz display coherence with whole-head theta-band activity. Second, fixation durations fluctuate rhythmically at ∼1 Hz, in coherence with occipital delta-band activity. This latter effect was additionally phase-locked to sentence endings, suggesting a relationship with the formation of multi-word chunks. Together, eye movements during reading contain rhythmic patterns that occur in synchrony with oscillatory brain activity. This suggests that linguistic processing imposes preferred processing time scales onto reading, largely independent of actual physical rhythms in the stimulus. The sampling, grouping, and transmission of information are supported by rhythmic brain activity, so-called neural oscillations. In addition to sampling external stimuli, such rhythms may also be endogenous, affecting processing from the inside out. In particular, endogenous rhythms may impose their pace onto language processing. Studying this is challenging because speech contains physical rhythms that mask endogenous activity. To overcome this challenge, we turned to naturalistic reading, where text does not require the reader to sample in a specific rhythm. We observed rhythmic patterns of eye movements that are synchronized to brain activity as recorded with EEG. This rhythmicity is not imposed by the external stimulus, which indicates that rhythmic brain activity may serve as a pacemaker for language processing.
神经振荡被认为支持言语和语言处理。它们不仅可能继承声学节奏,而且可能将内源性节奏强加于处理过程中。支持这一点,我们在此报告,人类(男性和女性)在自然阅读期间的眼球运动表现出与 EEG 具有频率选择性相干性的节奏模式,而没有任何刺激节奏。在两个不同的频带中观察到周期性:首先,与单词锁定的扫视在 4-5 Hz 处显示与全头 theta 频带活动的相干性。其次,注视持续时间以约 1 Hz 的节律波动,与枕部 delta 频带活动相干。后一种效应还与句子结尾相位锁定,表明与多词块的形成有关。总之,阅读期间的眼球运动包含与大脑振荡活动同步发生的节奏模式。这表明语言处理将首选的处理时间尺度强加于阅读,这在很大程度上独立于刺激中的实际物理节奏。信息的采样、分组和传输由所谓的神经振荡支持。除了对外部刺激进行采样外,这些节律也可能是内源性的,从内而外地影响处理。特别是,内源性节律可能将其节奏强加于语言处理。研究这一点具有挑战性,因为言语包含物理节奏,这些节奏掩盖了内源性活动。为了克服这一挑战,我们转向自然阅读,在自然阅读中,文本不需要读者以特定的节奏进行采样。我们观察到眼球运动的节奏模式与 EEG 记录的大脑活动同步。这种节奏不是由外部刺激强加的,这表明节律性脑活动可能作为语言处理的起搏器。