PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Researchers map brain areas vital to understanding language

2013-11-22
(Press-News.org) Contact information: Chelsey B. Coombs
diya@illinois.edu
217-333-5802
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Researchers map brain areas vital to understanding language

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — When reading text or listening to someone speak, we construct rich mental models that allow us to draw conclusions about other people, objects, actions, events, mental states and contexts. This ability to understand written or spoken language, called "discourse comprehension," is a hallmark of the human mind and central to everyday social life. In a new study, researchers uncovered the brain mechanisms that underlie discourse comprehension.

The study appears in Brain: A Journal of Neurology.

With his team, study leader Aron Barbey, a professor of neuroscience, of psychology, and of speech and hearing science at the University of Illinois, previously had mapped general intelligence, emotional intelligence and a host of other high-level cognitive functions. Barbey is the director of the Decision Neuroscience Laboratory at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at Illinois.

To investigate the brain regions that underlie discourse comprehension, the researchers studied a group of 145 American male Vietnam War veterans who sustained penetrating head injuries during combat. Barbey said these shrapnel-induced injuries typically produced focal brain damage, unlike injuries caused by stroke or other neurological disorders that affect multiple regions. These focal injuries allowed the researchers to pinpoint the structures that are critically important to discourse comprehension.

"Neuropsychological patients with focal brain lesions provide a valuable opportunity to study how different brain structures contribute to discourse comprehension," Barbey said.

A technique called voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping allowed the team to pool data from the veterans' CT scans to create a collective, three-dimensional map of the cerebral cortex. They divided this composite brain into units called voxels (the three-dimensional counterparts of two-dimensional pixels). This allowed them to compare the discourse comprehension abilities of patients with damage to a particular voxel or cluster of voxels with those of patients without injuries to those brain regions.

The researchers identified a network of brain areas in the frontal and parietal cortex that are essential to discourse comprehension.

"Rather than engaging brain regions that are classically involved in language processing, our results indicate that discourse comprehension depends on an executive control network that helps integrate incoming language with prior knowledge and experience," Barbey said.

Executive control, also known as executive function, refers to the ability to plan, organize and regulate one's behavior.

"The findings help us understand the neural foundations of discourse comprehension, and suggest that core elements of discourse processing emerge from a network of brain regions that support language processing and executive functions. The findings offer new insights into basic questions about the nature of discourse comprehension," Barbey said, "and could offer new targets for clinical interventions to help patients with cognitive-communication disorders.

"Discourse comprehension is a hallmark of human social behavior," Barbey said.

"By studying the mechanisms that underlie these abilities, we're able to advance our understanding of the remarkable cognitive and neural architecture from which language comprehension emerges."



INFORMATION:



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Breaking the code

2013-11-22
Breaking the code You may be sensitive to gluten, but you're not sure. Perhaps you can't put your finger on a recurring malaise, and your doctor is at a loss to figure it out. A diagnostic method recently developed by UC Santa Barbara ...

UCLA researchers' new technique improves accuracy, ease of cancer diagnosis

2013-11-22
UCLA researchers' new technique improves accuracy, ease of cancer diagnosis 'Deformability cytometry' can closely analyze more than 1,000 cells per second A team of researchers from UCLA and Harvard University have demonstrated a technique that, ...

Fun at work promotes employee retention but may hurt productivity

2013-11-22
Fun at work promotes employee retention but may hurt productivity Within the hospitality industry, manager support for fun is instrumental in reducing employee turnover, particularly for younger employees, according to a team of researchers. However, manager support for fun also ...

Will 2-D tin be the next super material?

2013-11-22
Will 2-D tin be the next super material? Theorists predict new single-layer material could go beyond graphene, conducting electricity with 100 percent efficiency at room temperature A single layer of tin atoms could be the world's first ...

Kessler Foundation study provides first Class 1 evidence for cognitive rehabilitation in MS

2013-11-22
Kessler Foundation study provides first Class 1 evidence for cognitive rehabilitation in MS MEMREHAB Trial shows a significant effect for cognitive rehabilitation in MS that lasts 6 months WEST ORANGE, NJ November 21, 2013. Kessler Foundation researchers ...

NASA sees Tropical Storm Helen affecting southeastern India

2013-11-22
NASA sees Tropical Storm Helen affecting southeastern India NASA's Aqua satellite captured visible and infrared imagery of slow-moving Tropical Storm Helen as it was spreading its western clouds over parts of southeastern India on November 21. On Nov. 21 at 07:55 ...

NASA catches Melissa's fickle life as a tropical storm

2013-11-22
NASA catches Melissa's fickle life as a tropical storm

What can happen when graphene meets a semiconductor

2013-11-22
What can happen when graphene meets a semiconductor UWM study shows another feature that affects electron transport in graphene For all the promise of graphene as a material for next-generation electronics and quantum computing, scientists still don't know ...

Searching for cosmic accelerators via IceCube

2013-11-22
Searching for cosmic accelerators via IceCube Berkeley Lab researchers part of an international hunt In our universe there are particle accelerators 40 million times more powerful than the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. Scientists don't know what ...

Does obesity reshape our sense of taste?

2013-11-22
Does obesity reshape our sense of taste? In a new study, mice who were overweight had fewer taste cells capable of detecting sweetness BUFFALO, N.Y. — Obesity may alter the way we taste at the most fundamental level: by changing how our tongues react to different ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Modesty and boastfulness – perception depends on usual performance

Do sweeteners increase your appetite? New evidence from randomised controlled trial says no 

Women with obesity do not need to gain weight during pregnancy, new study suggests

Individuals with multiple sclerosis face substantially greater risk of hospitalisation and death from COVID-19, despite high rates of vaccination

Study shows obesity in childhood associated with a more than doubling of risk of developing multiple sclerosis in early adulthood

Rice Emerging Scholars Program receives $2.5M NSF grant to boost STEM education

Virtual rehabilitation provides benefits for stroke recovery

Generative AI develops potential new drugs for antibiotic-resistant bacteria

Biofuels could help island nations survive a global catastrophe, study suggests

NJIT research team discovering how fluids behave in nanopores with NSF grant

New study shows association of historical housing discrimination and shortfalls in colon cancer treatment

Social media use may help to empower plastic surgery patients

Q&A: How to train AI when you don't have enough data

Wayne State University researchers uncover potential treatment targets for Zika virus-related eye abnormalities

Discovering Van Gogh in the wild: scientists unveil a new gecko species

Small birds spice up the already diverse diet of spotted hyenas in Namibia

Imaging detects transient “hypoxic pockets” in the mouse brain

Dissolved organic matter could be used to track and improve the health of freshwaters

Indoor air quality standards in public buildings would boost health and economy, say international experts

Positive associations between premenstrual disorders and perinatal depression

New imaging method illuminates oxygen's journey in the brain

Researchers discover key gene for toxic alkaloid in barley

New approach to monitoring freshwater quality can identify sources of pollution, and predict their effects

Bidirectional link between premenstrual disorders and perinatal depression

Cell division quality control ‘stopwatch’ uncovered

Vaccine protects cattle from bovine tuberculosis, may eliminate disease

Andrew Siemion to receive the SETI Institute’s 2024 Drake Award

New study shows how the Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus enters our cells

Neoadjuvant chemotherapy proves effective for locally advanced penile squamous cell carcinoma

Study flips treatment paradigm in bilateral Wilms tumor, shows resistance to chemotherapy may point toward favorable outcomes

[Press-News.org] Researchers map brain areas vital to understanding language