Title: SPL5: Early automaticity of neural language processing: lexical, morpho-syntactic and methodological perspectives
Funder: Medical Research Council

Abstract: (1) Scrutinising different facets of the comprehension processes in healthy people and in patient groups using fast neurophysiological imaging tools is essential for better understanding of the language function. As we have shown, language comprehension is an instantaneous process reflected in the brains neurophysiological activity within 100-250 ms In this programme, MEG and EEG are applied in healthy norm and in translational studies, looking at specific comprehension deficits and their physiological basis e.g. in healthy ageing, in schizophrenia, semantic dementia or mild cognitive impairment. In this endeavour, it is advantageous to use brain responses that do not explicitly require that subjects pay active attention to linguistic stimuli; the reason for this is both practical and theoretical. Many patients of interest suffer from attention deficits or simply cannot understand or perform an active task, making attention-demanding paradigms difficult to administer and their results difficult to interpret. At the theory level, attention-demanding tasks often introduce behavioural biases as well as induce secondary, post-comprehension processes, which may overlay and mask neural processes related to immediate comprehension, complicating interpretation of results and biasing them towards a particular stimulus type. Our results suggest an early near-parallel and automatic access to a variety of linguistic information types in the brain that does not require attention to the speech input. These results, obtained in ERP and ERF experiments using different languages, and backed structurally by fMRI, demonstrated that we could record neural activation specific to such language elements as morphemes and words and analyse the specific spatio-temporal configuration of such memory traces. These circuits become activated as early as 100-250 ms after the information is present in the spoken input, and can even interact in syntactic or semantic contexts on a similar timescale. We continue studying these processes of automatic rapid understanding; the main strands of this research are: Time course of language comprehension processes in passive tasks as reflected by MEG and EEG. We investigate how various psycholinguistic processes (e.g. lexico-semantic access, morphosyntax) can be traced in the brain, and how they interact with attention and other cognitive processes. Optimisation of experimental methods. Using non-attend tasks and precisely matched stimulus material in auditory and visual modalities, we are looking for the best passive experimental paradigm to assess automatic rapid linguistic processes in the absence of explicit experimental tasks. Language learning as reflected in the automatic brain responses. We show not only how the pre-existing linguistic circuits behave, but how they can be formed neurophysiologically, through practice or perceptual exposure as it happens in real life. Translational applications. Using passive automatic tasks for tracking language activations in the brain opens a unique opportunity to asses the language function even in subjects or patients who are unable to perform more demanding diagnostic tasks. We are investigating neural basis of language comprehension and its deficits in healthy ageing, schizophrenia, semantic dementia or mild cognitive impairment, and expanding this to include more conditions.


Research activity codes: 1.1 NORMAL BIOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT AND FUNCTIONING;2.1 BIOLOGICAL AND ENDOGENOUS FACTORS
Health categories: MENTAL HEALTH