Neural foundations of grammar

Language norm and pathology: the continuum of neural representations (2014)

We have shown that neural mechanisms of language processing do not differ qualitatively between healthy people and people with speech impairment. Despite the fact that patients’ language is characterized by a number of peculiarities, their mechanisms for language comprehension and production share much in common with those of healthy people. Our hemodynamic experiments demonstrated that intact brain regions normally involved in the realization of speech are usually activated in patients with brain damage and speech dysfunction. Some observed changes in activation are related to the compensatory reorganization of language in the brain and can be explained by an individual patient’s behavioral profile.

Neural foundations of language grammar: linguistic and domain-general cognitive components (2014)

We studied brain mechanisms specific to grammatical processing and an interaction between grammatical processing and non-linguistic cognitive factors. In particular, we developed and implemented paradigms for localization of the brain activity during sentence comprehension and for identification of the brain areas critically involved in the processing of aspectual and tense verbal forms in structurally different languages.  The other group of results was related to the interaction of the executive functions and the language. It has been demonstrated how healthy people and patients with aphasia realize multi-level intentions and referencing (Laurinavichyute et al., 2014, Neuropsychologia), and how the language interacts with the working memory at the functional level (Ivanova et al., 2015, Aphasiology).

Neural foundations of language grammar: structural and functional elements (2015)

We proceeded with examining mechanisms of grammar processing from the structural and functional perspectives.  From the structural perspective, our findings show that language processing to a large extent depends on brain regions involved in domain-general processing. From a functional perspective, we demonstrated that cognitive processes are tightly interleaved in language processing and vice versa.  Here we looked at the interaction between language and the semantic motor system by investigating the impact of motor stereotypes on processing prepositional and instrumental constructions in healthy controls and individuals with brain damage. Individuals with aphasia, as well as healthy controls, showed a facilitation effect when the syntactic construction sequentially paralleled sensorimotor stereotypes and a clear decrement in speed/accuracy of performance when the sentence did not sequentially match a motor action it specified irrespective of word order (Dragoy et al., 2016, Aphasiology) .

Neural foundations of language grammar: universal and language-specific effects (2016)

The final project was aimed at further differentiating purely linguistic mechanisms from general-cognitive mechanisms supporting language processing both on the psychological and neural levels.  Of particular interest to us were psychological and neural mechanisms of verb processing, as the verb is the core element of the sentence and is at the foundation of grammar processing. In a series of studies using structural and functional neuroimaging techniques we outlined a broad set of areas in verb processing tasks, that encompassed the frontal, insular and temporal regions, especially when processing more abstract and less semantically constrained verbs (see Fig. 1; Malyutina et al., 2016, Journal of Neurolinguistics).  Additionally, we demonstrated that cognitive processes, such as working memory, inhibition of interference, are closely related to language processing in individuals with aphasia, particularly in those with non-fluent type of aphasia, who seem to have decreased capacity for simultaneously manipulating several representations (Ivanova et al., in press, Aphasiology).  Finally, in another set of studies using diffusion-weight imaging to investigate intactness of major white matter tracts we outlined three major pathways, arcuate fasciculus, inferior frontal-occipital fasciculus, inferior longitudinal fasciculus, that contribute to language processing at the word and sentence levels. Our findings emphasize the role of cerebral connections that simultaneously contribute to a multitude of cognitive processes, in determining a profile of impairment.  In addition, for the first time it was clearly demonstrated that individual segments of these three tracts were differentially associated with language production and comprehension in aphasia (Ivanova et al., in press, Cortex). The outlined investigations in 2016 highlight the structural and functional overlap between language and general cognitive processing on both the psychological and neuronal levels, emphasizing the need to further study domain-general cognitive processes in order to fully understand the mechanisms behind language comprehension and production.  

Функциональная активация мозга при обработке инструментальных/неинструментальных глаголов 
(Malyutina et al., 2016, Journal of Neurolinguistics)

Publications

Ivanova M., Isaev D. Y., Dragoy O., Akinina Y., Petrushevsky, A. Fedina, O., Dronkers N. (In press).Diffusion-tensor imaging of major white matter tracts and their role in language processing in aphasia.  Cortex .

Ivanova M., Kuptsova S., Dronkers N. (In press).A comparison of two working memory tasks in aphasia.  Aphasiology .

Dragoy, O., Bergelson, M., Iskra, E., Laurinavichyute, A., Mannova, E., Skvortsov, A., & Statnikov, A. (2016).Comprehension of Reversible Constructions in Semantic Aphasia. Aphasiology, 30(1) , 1-22.

Malyutina, S., Dragoy, O., Ivanova, M., Laurinavichyute, A., Petrushevsky, A., Meindl, T., Pöppel, E., & Gutyrchik, E. (2016).Fishing is not wrestling: Neural underpinnings of the verb instrumentality effect. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 40 , 37-54.

Ivanova M., Dragoy O., Kuptsova S., Ulicheva A., Laurinavichyute A. (2015).The contribution of working memory to language comprehension: Differential effect of aphasia type.  Aphasiology, 29(6) , 645-664.

Laurinavichyute, A.K., Ulicheva, A., Ivanova, M.V., Kuptsova, S.V., & Dragoy, O. (2014).Processing lexical ambiguity in sentential context: Eye-tracking data from brain-damaged and non-brain-damaged individuals. Neuropsychologia, 64 , 360-373.


The project is supported by the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) and by a subsidy by the Russian Academic Excellence Project "5 - 100" (2014-2016). Principle investigators - Nina Dronkers and Olga Dragoy