PMID- 19595775
OWN - NLM
STAT- MEDLINE
DCOM- 20091030
LR  - 20090831
IS  - 1095-9572 (Electronic)
IS  - 1053-8119 (Linking)
VI  - 48
IP  - 4
DP  - 2009 Dec
TI  - An fMRI study of syntactic layers: sentential and lexical aspects of embedding.
PG  - 707-16
LID - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.07.001 [doi]
AB  - Sentences with embedding are more complex than sentences without embedding, 
      because they contain more syntactic layers in their phrasal architecture. Until 
      now, neuroimaging studies tested embedded sentences that also included syntactic 
      movement. To explore which cortical areas are specifically involved in the 
      processing of syntactic layers, we used embedded sentences that did not include 
      syntactic movement. We compared sentences in which the verb was complemented with 
      an embedded sentence (CP complement) to sentences with noun phrase (NP) 
      complements. The comparison of sentences with and without embedding revealed 
      activations in the left IFG, bilateral temporo-parietal cortices, bilateral MTG, 
      and precuneus. We further examined the effect of embedding at the lexical level. 
      For this, we tested whether verbs that can select CP complements, namely, whose 
      lexical entry includes a CP option, are more complex than verbs that do not 
      select CP complements, even when both verb types appeared in sentences without 
      embedding. The comparison of verbs that can take CP complements with verbs that 
      can take NP complements, when these verbs appeared with prepositional phrase 
      complements, revealed activations in bilateral anterior MTG and precuneus, 
      showing that embedding also affects processing at the lexical level. The results 
      thus show that sentential embedding, even without syntactic movement, loads onto 
      several cortical resources including the left IFG, indicating that the generation 
      of syntactic layers is cognitively costly, and that embedding affects processing 
      at both the sentence and the lexical levels.
FAU - Shetreet, Einat
AU  - Shetreet E
AD  - Department of Psychology, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Israel. 
      shetreet@post.tau.ac.il
FAU - Friedmann, Naama
AU  - Friedmann N
FAU - Hadar, Uri
AU  - Hadar U
LA  - eng
PT  - Journal Article
PT  - Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
DEP - 20090709
PL  - United States
TA  - Neuroimage
JT  - NeuroImage
JID - 9215515
SB  - IM
MH  - Adult
MH  - Brain/*physiology
MH  - Brain Mapping
MH  - Female
MH  - Humans
MH  - *Linguistics
MH  - Magnetic Resonance Imaging
MH  - Male
MH  - Mental Processes/*physiology
MH  - Reading
MH  - Young Adult
EDAT- 2009/07/15 09:00
MHDA- 2009/10/31 06:00
CRDT- 2009/07/15 09:00
PHST- 2009/03/09 00:00 [received]
PHST- 2009/06/19 00:00 [revised]
PHST- 2009/07/02 00:00 [accepted]
PHST- 2009/07/15 09:00 [entrez]
PHST- 2009/07/15 09:00 [pubmed]
PHST- 2009/10/31 06:00 [medline]
AID - S1053-8119(09)00743-5 [pii]
AID - 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.07.001 [doi]
PST - ppublish
SO  - Neuroimage. 2009 Dec;48(4):707-16. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.07.001. Epub 
      2009 Jul 9.