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Intonation guides sentence processing in the left inferior frontal gyrus

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van der Burght,  Constantijn
Department Neuropsychology, MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Max Planck Society;
Lise Meitner Research Group Cognition and Plasticity, MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Max Planck Society;

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Goucha,  Tomás
Department Neuropsychology, MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Max Planck Society;

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Friederici,  Angela D.
Department Neuropsychology, MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Max Planck Society;

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Kreitewolf,  Jens
Department Neuropsychology, MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Max Planck Society;
Department of Psychology, University of Lübeck, Germany;

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Hartwigsen,  Gesa
Department Neuropsychology, MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Max Planck Society;
Lise Meitner Research Group Cognition and Plasticity, MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Max Planck Society;

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Citation

van der Burght, C., Goucha, T., Friederici, A. D., Kreitewolf, J., & Hartwigsen, G. (2019). Intonation guides sentence processing in the left inferior frontal gyrus. Cortex, 117, 122-134. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2019.02.011.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0003-0E7F-1
Abstract
Speech prosody, the variation in sentence melody and rhythm, plays a crucial role in sentence comprehension. Specifically, changes in intonational pitch along a sentence can affect our understanding of who did what to whom. To date, it remains unclear how the brain processes this particular use of intonation and which brain regions are involved. In particular, one central matter of debate concerns the lateralisation of intonation processing. To study the role of intonation in sentence comprehension, we designed a functional MRI experiment in which participants listened to spoken sentences. Critically, the interpretation of these sentences depended on either intonational or grammatical cues. Our results
showed stronger functional activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) when the intonational cue was crucial for sentence comprehension compared to when it was not. When instead a grammatical cue was crucial for sentence comprehension, we found involvement of an overlapping region in the left IFG, as well as in a posterior temporal
region. A further analysis revealed that the lateralisation of intonation processing depends on its role in syntactic processing: activity in the IFG was lateralised to the left hemisphere when intonation was the only source of information to comprehend the sentence. In contrast, activity in the IFG was right-lateralised when intonation did not contribute to sentence comprehension. Together, these results emphasise the key role of the left IFG in sentence comprehension, showing the importance of this region when intonation
establishes sentence structure. Furthermore, our results provide evidence for the theory
that the lateralisation of prosodic processing is modulated by its linguistic role.