Institute of Linguistics, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai 201620, China; Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
Institute of Linguistics, Shanghai International Studies University, Shanghai 201620, China.
Neuroimage. 2024 Oct 15;300:120853. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2024.120853. Epub 2024 Sep 11.
Linguistic communication is often considered as an action serving the function of conveying the speaker's goal to the addressee. Although neuroimaging studies have suggested a role of the motor system in comprehending communicative functions, the underlying mechanism is yet to be specified. Here, by two EEG experiments and a tACS experiment, we demonstrate that the frontocentral beta oscillation, which represents action states, plays a crucial part in linguistic communication understanding. Participants read scripts involving two interlocutors and rated the interlocutors' attitudes. Each script included a critical sentence said by the speaker expressing a context-dependent function of either promise, request, or reply to the addressee's query. These functions were behaviorally discriminated, with higher addressee's will rating for the promise than for the reply and higher speaker's will rating for the request than for the reply. EEG multivariate analyses showed that different communicative functions were represented by different patterns of the frontocentral beta activity but not by patterns of alpha activity. Further tACS results showed that, relative to alpha tACS and sham stimulation, beta tACS improved the predictability of communicative functions of request or reply, as measured by the speaker's will rating. These results convergently suggest a causal role of the frontocentral beta activities in comprehending linguistic communications.
语言交际通常被认为是一种将说话者的意图传达给听话者的行为。尽管神经影像学研究表明运动系统在理解交际功能中起作用，但潜在的机制仍有待阐明。在这里，通过两个 EEG 实验和一个 tACS 实验，我们证明了代表动作状态的额中央β振荡在语言交际理解中起着至关重要的作用。参与者阅读了涉及两个对话者的脚本，并对对话者的态度进行了评分。每个脚本都包含一个关键句子，由说话者说出，表达了一种语境相关的功能，要么是对听话者的询问做出承诺，要么是请求，要么是对询问的回答。这些功能在行为上是可区分的，承诺的听话者意愿评分高于回答，请求的说话者意愿评分高于回答。EEG 多变量分析表明，不同的交际功能由额中央β活动的不同模式而不是α活动的模式来表示。进一步的 tACS 结果表明，与α tACS 和假刺激相比，β tACS 提高了请求或回答的交际功能的可预测性，这可以通过说话者的意愿评分来衡量。这些结果共同表明额中央β活动在理解语言交际中起着因果作用。
