Transcript RH & discourse, Affective disorders

LA NEUROSINTAXIS 2
13 ABR 2011 – DÍA 37
Neurolingüística del español
SPAN 4270
Harry Howard
Tulane University
ORGANIZACIÓN DEL CURSO
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http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/SPAN4130Neurospan/
 El curso es apto para un electivo en neurociencia.
 Neurolinguistics and linguistic aphasiology está
en reserva en la biblioteca.
 Human Research Protection Program

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http://tulane.edu/asvpr/irb/index.cfm
 Before beginning research at Tulane University, all
research personnel must complete the CITI Training
Program; this can be completed at
www.citiprogram.org.

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REPASO
EEG
Electroencephalography
(EEG) is the
measurement of
electrical activity
produced by the brain
as recorded from
electrodes placed on the
scalp.
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SCALP (CUERO CABELLUDO) EEG
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Scalp EEG is collected
from tens to hundreds
of electrodes
positioned on different
locations at the
surface of the head.
 EEG signals (in the
range of millivolts) are
amplified and
digitalized for later
processing.
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ERP (POTENCIA EVOCADA)
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Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) are positive
and negative voltage fluctuations (or components) in
the ongoing EEG that are time-locked to the onset of
a sensory, motor, or cognitive event.
ERPs reflect brain activity that is specifically related
to some stimulus or other event.
This activity cannot be directly observed in the EEG
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
the EEG is a composite of simultaneously occurring brain
activity
 it doesn't reflect just the activity associated with the event
of interest
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In other words, the "signal" (the brain response to
some event) is swamped by the "noise" (the brain
activity that is unrelated to that event).
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SIGNAL AVERAGING
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The solution to this problem is to present not just
one instance of the event of interest, but many
instances.
 Epochs of brain activity, each one time-locked to
the onset of an event, are then averaged together.
 The "random" activity washes out during
averaging, whereas the brain activity of interest namely, what is constant over presentations of
the event of interest - stays in the signal.
 Through this signal-averaging procedure, it is
possible to isolate the brain response that is
specifically elicited in response to some event of
interest.
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ERP PROCEDURE
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ERP COMPONENTS
NAMED BY THEIR POLARITY AND PEAK
LATENCY (IN MS)
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NEUROCOGNITIVE MODEL OF
AUDITORY SENTENCE PROCESSING
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BRODMANN AREAS IN THE LEFT
HEMISPHERE
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Inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) = green,
Superior temporal gyrus (STG) = red
Middle temporal gyrus (MTG) = blue
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INTRODUCTION
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Die Gans wurde (*im) gefüttert.
 The goose was (*in the) fed.
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The first phase (100-300 ms) represents the time
window in which the initial syntactic structure is
formed on the basis of information about word
category.
 For instance, the insertion of a contracted
preposition+article between an auxiliary verb
and past participle in German, produces a
significantly higher ERP amplitude during this
period than the same sentence without the
intrusive material
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PHRASES CAN BE PUT TOGETHER
TO FORM SENTENCES
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Striped orange cats slept soundly.
 Colorless green ideas slept furiously.
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Early left anterior negativity
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THE ELAN
SINCE THE MEANING DOESN’T MATTER,
WE CAN WRITE WORD-ORDER RULES
BASED ON CATEGORIES
A noun phrase (NP) consists of … ?

A verb phrase (VP) consists of … ?
A verb followed by an adverb
 VP  V Adv
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A sentence consists of … ?
A noun phrase followed by a verb phrase
 S  NP VP
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An optional determiner followed by one or more
adjectives followed by a noun
 NP  (Det) Adj (Adj) N
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BUT SUCH A REAL GRAMMAR IS
FAIRLY COMPLEX
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Perhaps too complex for direct study
 They can teach subjects a simplified set of rules
from a language that they do not know.
 But even better is to teach subjects an artificial
grammar (the syntactic analog of a nonsense
word) which have easy-to-control properties.
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A REGULAR GRAMMAR
The rules
How would you generate the string “ababab”?
 This language is known as (ab)n.
 From fMRI we know that violations of this
grammar activate BA 44 and BA 6.
 The English grammar that we made up is also of
this type.
 So are the violations of German grammar.
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S  Xab
 X  Xab
 X  ab
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A CONTEXT-FREE GRAMMAR
The rules
How would you generate the string “aaabbb”?
 How would you generate the string “ababab”?
 This language is known as anbn.
 From fMRI we know that violations of this
grammar activate BA 44, but not BA 6.
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S  aXb
 X  aXb
 X  ab
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Left anterior negativity
Phase 2 (300-500 ms)
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THE LAN
OVERVIEW
The LAN component is observed with:
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morphosyntactic errors
 filler-gap dependencies
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SUBCATEGORIZATION VIOLATIONS
IN GERMAN 1 (RÖSLER ET AL. 1993)
The passive voice only applies to transitive verbs:
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We say that (4) violates the subcategorization
requirement of fall, which is that it cannot take a
direct object
 Sample test sentences in German

Der Präsident wurde begrüßt.

the president is-being greeted
 *Der Lehrer wurde gefallen.

the teacher is-being fallen
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Someone greeted the president. >
The president was greeted.
The teacher fell. >
*The teacher was fallen.
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SUBCATEGORIZATION VIOLATIONS
IN GERMAN 2 (RÖSLER ET AL. 1993)
In German, verbs take one auxiliary (haben) or
another (sein) in the perfect tenses:
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Sample test sentences:
Der Clown hat gelacht.
 *Der Dichter hat gegangen.
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Der Clown hat gelacht.
 the clown has laughed
 Der Dichter ist gegangen.
 the poet has left
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AGREEMENT VIOLATIONS IN
ENGLISH (OSTERHOUT & MOBLEY
1995)
Verbs must agree with their subjects in number

Reflexive pronouns must agree with their
antecedents in number and gender
Number: The hungry guests helped
{themselves/*himself} to food.
 Gender: The successful woman congratulated
{herself/*himself} on the promotion.
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The elected officials {hope/*hopes} to succeed.
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ALSO …
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with English pronouns marked incorrectly for
case, Coulson et al. (1998),
 with German nouns not agreeing with their
articles, Gunter et al. (2000),
 with Spanish nouns not agreeing with their
articles, Barber & Carreiras (2005)
 etc.
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Más neurosintaxis
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