Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (Apr 2016)

Oscillatory brain dynamics during sentence reading: A Fixation-related spectral perturbation analysis.

  • Lorenzo eVignali,
  • Nicole Alexandra Himmelstoss,
  • Stefan eHawelka,
  • Fabio eRichlan,
  • Florian eHutzler

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00191
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10

Abstract

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The present study investigated oscillatory brain dynamics during self-paced sentence-level processing. Participants read fully correct sentences, sentences containing a semantic violation and sentences in which the order of the words was randomized. At the target word level, fixations on semantically unrelated words elicited a lower-beta band (13-18 Hz) desynchronization. At the sentence level, gamma power (31-55 Hz) increased linearly for syntactically correct sentences, but not when the order of the words was randomized. In the 300 to 900 ms time window after sentence onsets, theta power (4-7 Hz) was greater for syntactically correct sentences as compared to sentences where no syntactic structure was preserved (random words condition). We interpret our results as conforming with a recently formulated predictive-coding framework for oscillatory neural dynamics during sentence-level language comprehension. Additionally, we discuss how our results relate to previous findings with serial visual presentation versus self-paced reading.

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