BIROn - Birkbeck Institutional Research Online

    Attention to language: novel MEG paradigm for registering involuntary language processing in the brain

    Shtyrov, Y. and Smith, Marie L. and Horner, A.J. and Henson, R.N.A. and Nathan, P.J. and Bullmore, E.T. and Pulvermüller, F. (2012) Attention to language: novel MEG paradigm for registering involuntary language processing in the brain. Neuropsychologia 50 (11), pp. 2605-2616. ISSN 0028-3932.

    Full text not available from this repository.

    Abstract

    Previous research indicates that, under explicit instructions to listen to spoken stimuli or in speech-oriented behavioural tasks, the brain’s responses to senseless pseudowords are larger than those to meaningful words; the reverse is true in non-attended conditions. These differential responses could be used as a tool to trace linguistic processes in the brain and their interaction with attention. However, as previous studies relied on explicit instructions to attend or ignore the stimuli, a technique for automatic attention modulation (i.e., not dependent on explicit instruction) would be more advantageous, especially when cooperation with instructions may not be guaranteed (e.g., neurological patients, children etc). Here we present a novel paradigm in which the stimulus context automatically draws attention to speech. In a non-attend passive auditory oddball sequence, rare words and pseudowords were presented among frequent non-speech tones of variable frequency and length. The low percentage of spoken stimuli guarantees an involuntary attention switch to them. The speech stimuli, in turn, could be disambiguated as words or pseudowords only in their end, at the last phoneme, after the attention switch would have already occurred. Our results confirmed that this paradigm can indeed be used to induce automatic shifts of attention to spoken input. At ∼250 ms after the stimulus onset, a P3a-like neuromagnetic deflection was registered to spoken (but not tone) stimuli indicating an involuntary attention shift. Later, after the word-pseudoword divergence point, we found a larger oddball response to pseudowords than words, best explained by neural processes of lexical search facilitated through increased attention. Furthermore, we demonstrate a breakdown of this orderly pattern of neurocognitive processes as a result of sleep deprivation. The new paradigm may thus be an efficient way to assess language comprehension processes and their dynamic interaction with those of attention allocation. It does it in an automatic and task-free fashion, indicating its potential benefit for assessing uncooperative clinical populations.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): Language, Word, Attention, ERP (ERF), MEG, EEG, Mismatch negativity (MMN), P3a
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences
    Research Centres and Institutes: Brain and Cognitive Development, Centre for (CBCD)
    Depositing User: Administrator
    Date Deposited: 11 Sep 2012 09:58
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 16:58
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/5059

    Statistics

    Activity Overview
    6 month trend
    0Downloads
    6 month trend
    406Hits

    Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.

    Archive Staff Only (login required)

    Edit/View Item Edit/View Item