Brain, Vol 121, Issue 6 1133-1142, Copyright © 1998 by Oxford University Press
P Helenius, R Salmelin, E Service and JF Connolly
The time course and cortical basis of reading comprehension were studied
using magnetoencephalography. The cortical structures implicated most
consistently with comprehension were located in the immediate vicinity of
the left auditory cortex, where final words totally inappropriate to the
overall sentence context evoked enduring activation starting approximately
250 ms and lasting up to 600 ms after word onset. Contextually appropriate
but unexpected words produced weaker activation which terminated earlier.
Highly anticipated words totally failed to activate this area, suggesting
that the conceptual network became involved only if unexpected information
was detected during the primary word identification process. We propose
that the point in time (350 ms after word onset) where the response to
appropriate but unexpected endings started to diverge from those to
contextually inappropriate endings reflects the boundary between
understanding a single word and the meaning of a whole sentence.
ARTICLES
Distinct time courses of word and context comprehension in the left temporal cortex
Brain Research Unit, Helsinki University of Technology, Espoo, Finland.
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