Effective connectivity of cortical and subcortical regions during unification 
of sentence structure

Snijders, Tineke M.; Petersson, Karl Magnus; Hagoort, Peter

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.05.035

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Effective connectivity of cortical and subcortical regions during unification of sentence structure

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Snijders, Tineke M.
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, External Organizations;
MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;
Rudolf Magnus Institute of Neuroscience, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University Medical Centre Utrecht, the Netherlands;
Departments of Experimental and Developmental Psychology, Utrecht University, the Netherlands;

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Petersson, Karl Magnus
Neurobiology of Language Group, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, External Organizations;
Radboud University Nijmegen;

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Hagoort, Peter
Neurobiology of Language Group, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;
Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, External Organizations;
Radboud University Nijmegen;

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Citation

Snijders, T. M., Petersson, K. M., & Hagoort, P. (2010). Effective connectivity of cortical and subcortical regions during unification of sentence structure. NeuroImage, 52, 1633-1644. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.05.035.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0012-B712-6

Abstract

In a recent fMRI study we showed that left posterior middle temporal gyrus (LpMTG) subserves the retrieval of a word's lexical-syntactic properties from the mental lexicon (long-term memory), while left posterior inferior frontal gyrus (LpIFG) is involved in unifying (on-line integration of) this information into a sentence structure (Snijders et al., 2009). In addition, the right IFG, right MTG, and the right striatum were involved in the unification process. Here we report results from a psychophysical interactions (PPI) analysis in which we investigated the effective connectivity between LpIFG and LpMTG during unification, and how the right hemisphere areas and the striatum are functionally connected to the unification network. LpIFG and LpMTG both showed enhanced connectivity during the unification process with a region slightly superior to our previously reported LpMTG. Right IFG better predicted right temporal activity when unification processes were more strongly engaged, just as LpIFG better predicted left temporal activity. Furthermore, the striatum showed enhanced coupling to LpIFG and LpMTG during unification. We conclude that bilateral inferior frontal and posterior temporal regions are functionally connected during sentence-level unification. Cortico-subcortical connectivity patterns suggest cooperation between inferior frontal and striatal regions in performing unification operations on lexical-syntactic representations retrieved from LpMTG.