Views on how the electrical activity that the brain generates reflects the functions of different language structures.

Human language is what it is because of its function and its implementation. We are far from understanding how language comprehension is carried out by the human brain. This task can be made easier by considering that evidence for the what and how of language comes from the study of linguistics, psychology, and neuroscience. The approach outlined herein describes how these different sources of evidence can be combined in studies of written and spoken sentence processing by using a measure of the brain's electrical activity. The outcome is a more temporally precise view of the analysis of language structures in our minds and brains.

[1]  T. Allison,et al.  Word recognition in the human inferior temporal lobe , 1994, Nature.

[2]  M. Kutas,et al.  Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) elicited during rapid serial visual presentation of congruous and incongruous sentences. , 1987, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology. Supplement.

[3]  Terrence J. Sejnowski,et al.  An Information-Maximization Approach to Blind Separation and Blind Deconvolution , 1995, Neural Computation.

[4]  H. Neville,et al.  Natural speech processing: An analysis using event-related brain potentials , 1991, Psychobiology.

[5]  D. Aaronson,et al.  Reading strategies for children and adults: a quantitative model. , 1986, Psychological review.

[6]  M. Kutas,et al.  Bridging the Gap: Evidence from ERPs on the Processing of Unbounded Dependencies , 1993, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[7]  F. Bloom,et al.  Modulation of early sensory processing in human auditory cortex during auditory selective attention. , 1993, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[8]  R. Näätänen Attention and brain function , 1992 .

[9]  P. Tueting,et al.  Event-related brain potentials in man , 1978 .

[10]  G. Mulder,et al.  Language, memory, and aging: an electrophysiological exploration of the N400 during reading of memory-demanding sentences. , 1995, Psychophysiology.

[11]  S. Farmer,et al.  The effects of physical and semantic incongruities on auditory event-related potentials. , 1984, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[12]  S. Butler,et al.  EEG correlates of cerebral dominance. , 1976, Advances in psychobiology.

[13]  C. Wernicke Der aphasische Symptomencomplex: Eine psychologische Studie auf anatomischer Basis , 1874 .

[14]  M. Kutas,et al.  The Search for Common Sense: An Electrophysiological Study of the Comprehension of Words and Pictures in Reading , 1996, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[15]  A. Benton,et al.  On Aphasia , 1874, British medical journal.

[16]  S. Petersen,et al.  Activation of extrastriate and frontal cortical areas by visual words and word-like stimuli. , 1990, Science.

[17]  H. Mayberg Brain Activation , 1994, Neurology.

[18]  I. Divac Cortical circuits: Synaptic organization of the cerebral cortex. Structure, function and theory by Edward L. White, Birkäuser, 1989. Sw. fr. 88.00 (xvi + 223 pages) ISBN 3 7643 3402 9 , 1990, Trends in Neurosciences.

[19]  P. Holcomb,et al.  Event-related brain potentials elicited by syntactic anomaly , 1992 .

[20]  M. Kutas,et al.  Expect the Unexpected: Event-related Brain Response to Morphosyntactic Violations , 1998 .

[21]  T. Deacon Cortical connections of the inferior arcuate sulcus cortex in the macaque brain , 1992, Brain Research.

[22]  M. Garrett,et al.  Syntactically Based Sentence Processing Classes: Evidence from Event-Related Brain Potentials , 1991, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[23]  M. Kutas,et al.  Reading senseless sentences: brain potentials reflect semantic incongruity. , 1980, Science.

[24]  K Willmes,et al.  To what extent can aphasic syndromes be localized? , 1993, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[25]  J. Pernier,et al.  Improved dipole localization using local mesh refinement of realistic head geometries: an EEG simulation study. , 1996, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[26]  R P Lesser,et al.  Basal temporal language area demonstrated by electrical stimulation , 1986, Neurology.

[27]  A. Dale,et al.  New images from human visual cortex , 1996, Trends in Neurosciences.

[28]  P. Holcomb,et al.  Event related potentials and language comprehension. , 1995 .

[29]  David R. Dowty Thematic Roles and Semantics , 1986 .

[30]  G. Waters,et al.  The capacity theory of sentence comprehension: critique of Just and Carpenter (1992) , 1996, Psychological review.

[31]  Robert Kluender,et al.  Subjacency as a processing phenomenon , 1993 .

[32]  Thomas F. Mnte,et al.  Brain Activity Associated with Syntactic Incongruencies in Words and Pseudo-Words , 1997, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[33]  M. Rugg,et al.  Electrophysiology of Mind: Event-Related Brain Potentials and Cognition , 1995 .

[34]  N. Geschwind The organization of language and the brain. , 1970, Science.

[35]  M. Kutas,et al.  An Event-Related Potential (ERP) Analysis of Semantic Congruity and Repetition Effects in Sentences , 1992, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[36]  M. Kutas,et al.  Who Did What and When? Using Word- and Clause-Level ERPs to Monitor Working Memory Usage in Reading , 1995, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[37]  M. Kutas,et al.  Event-related brain potentials to grammatical errors and semantic anomalies , 1983, Memory & cognition.

[38]  M A Just,et al.  A theory of reading: from eye fixations to comprehension. , 1980, Psychological review.

[39]  Robert E. Kluender Cognitive constraints on variables in syntax , 1993 .

[40]  Marta Kutas,et al.  Event related potentials to relative clause processing in spoken sentences , 1995 .

[41]  M. Kutas,et al.  Influences of semantic and syntactic context on open- and closed-class words , 1991, Memory & cognition.

[42]  H. Neville,et al.  Fractionating language: different neural subsystems with different sensitive periods. , 1992, Cerebral cortex.

[43]  G. McCarthy,et al.  Language-related field potentials in the anterior-medial temporal lobe: I. Intracranial distribution and neural generators , 1995, The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience.

[44]  P. Nunez,et al.  Electric fields of the brain , 1981 .

[45]  Marta Kutas,et al.  Electrophysiological insights into the nature of the semantic deficit in Alzheimer's disease , 1996, Neuropsychologia.

[46]  M I Sereno,et al.  Analysis of retinotopic maps in extrastriate cortex. , 1994, Cerebral cortex.

[47]  H. M. Müller,et al.  Event-related potentials elicited by spoken relative clauses. , 1997, Brain research. Cognitive brain research.

[48]  M. Kutas,et al.  Interactions between sentence context and word frequencyinevent-related brainpotentials , 1990, Memory & cognition.

[49]  E. Donchin,et al.  COGNITIVE PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY: THE ENDOGENOUS COMPONENTS OF THE ERP , 1978 .

[50]  M A Just,et al.  The capacity theory of comprehension: new frontiers of evidence and arguments. , 1996, Psychological review.

[51]  M. Kutas,et al.  Brain potentials during reading reflect word expectancy and semantic association , 1984, Nature.

[52]  A. Dale,et al.  Improved Localizadon of Cortical Activity by Combining EEG and MEG with MRI Cortical Surface Reconstruction: A Linear Approach , 1993, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[53]  M. Just,et al.  Individual differences in syntactic processing: The role of working memory , 1991 .

[54]  Jeffrey L. Elman,et al.  A PDP Approach to Processing Center-Embedded Sentences , 1992 .

[55]  M. Goodale,et al.  The visual brain in action , 1995 .

[56]  N. Burgess,et al.  Toward a network model of the articulatory loop , 1992, Connectionist psychology: A text with readings.

[57]  Charles J. Fillmore,et al.  THE CASE FOR CASE. , 1967 .

[58]  Colin M. Brown,et al.  The syntactic positive shift (sps) as an erp measure of syntactic processing , 1993 .