TY - JOUR
T1 - Semantic unification modulates N400 and BOLD signal change in the brain
T2 - A simultaneous EEG-fMRI study
AU - Zhu, Zude
AU - Bastiaansen, Marcel
AU - Hakun, Jonathan G.
AU - Petersson, Karl Magnus
AU - Wang, Suiping
AU - Hagoort, Peter
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was supported by grants from the Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC 31571136 , 31100811 and 31871133 ), the National Social Science Foundation of China ( 15AZD048 ), and Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions, Jiangsu . We thank Dr. Li Ma from Jiangsu Normal University for her assistance in proofreading.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019
PY - 2019/11
Y1 - 2019/11
N2 - Semantic unification during sentence comprehension has been associated with amplitude change of the N400 in event-related potential (ERP) studies, and activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies. However, the specificity of this activation to semantic unification remains unknown. To more closely examine the brain processes involved in semantic unification, we employed simultaneous EEG-fMRI to time-lock the semantic unification related N400 change, and integrated trial-by-trial variation in both N400 and BOLD change beyond the condition-level BOLD change difference measured in traditional fMRI analyses. Participants read sentences in which semantic unification load was parametrically manipulated by varying cloze probability. Separately, ERP and fMRI results replicated previous findings, in that semantic unification load parametrically modulated the amplitude of N400 and cortical activation. Integrated EEG-fMRI analyses revealed a different pattern in which functional activity in the left IFG and bilateral supramarginal gyrus (SMG) was associated with N400 amplitude, with the left IFG activation and bilateral SMG activation being selective to the condition-level and trial-level of semantic unification load, respectively. By employing the EEG-fMRI integrated analyses, this study among the first sheds light on how to integrate trial-level variation in language comprehension.
AB - Semantic unification during sentence comprehension has been associated with amplitude change of the N400 in event-related potential (ERP) studies, and activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies. However, the specificity of this activation to semantic unification remains unknown. To more closely examine the brain processes involved in semantic unification, we employed simultaneous EEG-fMRI to time-lock the semantic unification related N400 change, and integrated trial-by-trial variation in both N400 and BOLD change beyond the condition-level BOLD change difference measured in traditional fMRI analyses. Participants read sentences in which semantic unification load was parametrically manipulated by varying cloze probability. Separately, ERP and fMRI results replicated previous findings, in that semantic unification load parametrically modulated the amplitude of N400 and cortical activation. Integrated EEG-fMRI analyses revealed a different pattern in which functional activity in the left IFG and bilateral supramarginal gyrus (SMG) was associated with N400 amplitude, with the left IFG activation and bilateral SMG activation being selective to the condition-level and trial-level of semantic unification load, respectively. By employing the EEG-fMRI integrated analyses, this study among the first sheds light on how to integrate trial-level variation in language comprehension.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jneuroling.2019.100855
DO - 10.1016/j.jneuroling.2019.100855
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85068155993
SN - 0911-6044
VL - 52
JO - Journal of Neurolinguistics
JF - Journal of Neurolinguistics
M1 - 100855
ER -