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On sense and reference: examining the functional neuroanatomy of referential processing

dc.contributor.authorNieuwland, Mante S.
dc.contributor.authorPetersson, Karl Magnus
dc.contributor.authorVan Berkum, Jos J. A.
dc.date.accessioned2018-12-07T14:58:15Z
dc.date.available2018-12-07T14:58:15Z
dc.date.issued2007-09
dc.description.abstractIn an event-related fMRI study, we examined the cortical networks involved in establishing. reference during language comprehension. We compared BOLD responses to sentences containing referentially ambiguous pronouns (e.g., "Ronald told Frank that he..."), referentially failing pronouns (e.g., "Rose told Emily that he...") or coherent pronouns. Referential ambiguity selectively recruited media[ prefrontal regions, suggesting that readers engaged in problemsolving to select a unique referent from the discourse model. Referential failure elicited activation increases in brain regions associated with mo rp ho -syntactic processing, and, for those readers who took failing pronouns to refer to unmentioned entities, additional regions associated with elaborative inferencing were observed. The networks activated by these two referential problems did not overlap with the network activated by a standard semantic anomaly. Instead, we observed a double dissociation, in that the systems activated by semantic anomaly are deactivated by referential ambiguity, and vice versa. This inverse coupling may reflect the dynamic recruitment of semantic and episodic processing to resolve semantically or referentially problematic situations. More generally, our findings suggest that neurocognitive accounts of language comprehension need to address not just how we parse a sentence and combine individual word meanings, but also how we determine who's who and what's what during language COmprehension. (c) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
dc.identifier.doi10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.05.048
dc.identifier.issn1053-8119
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10400.1/11934
dc.language.isoeng
dc.peerreviewedyes
dc.publisherElsevier
dc.subjectEvent-related fMRI
dc.subjectLanguage comprehension
dc.subjectBrain potentials
dc.subjectText comprehension
dc.subjectFrontal lobes
dc.subjectSentence comprehension
dc.subjectFrontomedian cortex
dc.subjectPronoun resolution
dc.subjectPrefrontal cortex
dc.subjectCognitive control
dc.titleOn sense and reference: examining the functional neuroanatomy of referential processing
dc.typejournal article
dspace.entity.typePublication
oaire.citation.endPage1004
oaire.citation.issue3
oaire.citation.startPage993
oaire.citation.titleNeuroimage
oaire.citation.volume37
person.familyNamePetersson
person.givenNameKarl Magnus
person.identifier13089
person.identifier.ciencia-id6D14-B1D1-1532
person.identifier.orcid0000-0002-8245-0392
person.identifier.ridE-8188-2012
person.identifier.scopus-author-id7006470225
rcaap.rightsopenAccess
rcaap.typearticle
relation.isAuthorOfPublication0f437ab3-c630-40ad-963f-13196ad4fbd6
relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscovery0f437ab3-c630-40ad-963f-13196ad4fbd6

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