Event-related responses reflect chunk boundaries in natural speech

Chunking language has been proposed to be vital for comprehension enabling the extraction of meaning from a continuous stream of speech. However, neurocognitive mechanisms of chunking are poorly understood. The present study investigated neural correlates of chunk boundaries intuitively identified b...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Anurova, I. (Author), Dobrego, A. (Author), Mauranen, A. (Author), Mikusova, N. (Author), Palva, S. (Author), Suni, A. (Author), Vetchinnikova, S. (Author), Williams, N. (Author)
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Academic Press Inc. 2022
Subjects:
EEG
MEG
Online Access:View Fulltext in Publisher
LEADER 02854nam a2200505Ia 4500
001 10.1016-j.neuroimage.2022.119203
008 220517s2022 CNT 000 0 und d
020 |a 10538119 (ISSN) 
245 1 0 |a Event-related responses reflect chunk boundaries in natural speech 
260 0 |b Academic Press Inc.  |c 2022 
856 |z View Fulltext in Publisher  |u https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2022.119203 
520 3 |a Chunking language has been proposed to be vital for comprehension enabling the extraction of meaning from a continuous stream of speech. However, neurocognitive mechanisms of chunking are poorly understood. The present study investigated neural correlates of chunk boundaries intuitively identified by listeners in natural speech drawn from linguistic corpora using magneto- and electroencephalography (MEEG). In a behavioral experiment, subjects marked chunk boundaries in the excerpts intuitively, which revealed highly consistent chunk boundary markings across the subjects. We next recorded brain activity to investigate whether chunk boundaries with high and medium agreement rates elicit distinct evoked responses compared to non-boundaries. Pauses placed at chunk boundaries elicited a closure positive shift with the sources over bilateral auditory cortices. In contrast, pauses placed within a chunk were perceived as interruptions and elicited a biphasic emitted potential with sources located in the bilateral primary and non-primary auditory areas with right-hemispheric dominance, and in the right inferior frontal cortex. Furthermore, pauses placed at stronger boundaries elicited earlier and more prominent activation over the left hemisphere suggesting that brain responses to chunk boundaries of natural speech can be modulated by the relative strength of different linguistic cues, such as syntactic structure and prosody. © 2022 
650 0 4 |a adult 
650 0 4 |a article 
650 0 4 |a auditory cortex 
650 0 4 |a brain function 
650 0 4 |a Chunking 
650 0 4 |a Closure positive shift 
650 0 4 |a controlled study 
650 0 4 |a EEG 
650 0 4 |a electroencephalogram 
650 0 4 |a electroencephalography 
650 0 4 |a Emitted potential 
650 0 4 |a evoked response 
650 0 4 |a female 
650 0 4 |a frontal cortex 
650 0 4 |a hemispheric dominance 
650 0 4 |a human 
650 0 4 |a human experiment 
650 0 4 |a Interruptions 
650 0 4 |a left hemisphere 
650 0 4 |a male 
650 0 4 |a MEG 
650 0 4 |a Natural speech 
650 0 4 |a prosody 
650 0 4 |a speech 
700 1 |a Anurova, I.  |e author 
700 1 |a Dobrego, A.  |e author 
700 1 |a Mauranen, A.  |e author 
700 1 |a Mikusova, N.  |e author 
700 1 |a Palva, S.  |e author 
700 1 |a Suni, A.  |e author 
700 1 |a Vetchinnikova, S.  |e author 
700 1 |a Williams, N.  |e author 
773 |t NeuroImage