High-level language brain regions are sensitive to sub-lexical regularities

ABSTRACT

A network of left frontal and temporal brain regions supports ‘high-level’ language processing— including the processing of word meanings, as well as word-combinatorial processing—across presentation modalities. This ‘core’ language network has been argued to store our knowledge of words and constructions as well as constraints on how those combine to form sentences. However, our linguistic knowledge additionally includes information about sounds (phonemes) and how they combine to form clusters, syllables, and words. Is this knowledge of phoneme combinatorics also represented in these language regions? Across five fMRI experiments, we investigated the sensitivity of high-level language processing brain regions to sub-lexical linguistic sound patterns by examining responses to diverse nonwords—sequences of sounds/letters that do not constitute real words (e.g., punes, silory, flope). We establish robust responses in the language network to visually (Experiment 1a, n=605) and auditorily (Experiments 1b, n=12, and 1c, n=13) presented nonwords relative to baseline. In Experiment 2 (n=16), we find stronger responses to nonwords that obey the phoneme-combinatorial constraints of English. Finally, in Experiment 3 (n=14) and a post-hoc analysis of Experiment 2, we provide suggestive evidence that the responses in Experiments 1 and 2 are not due to the activation of real words that share some phonology with the nonwords. The results suggest that knowledge of phoneme combinatorics and representations of sub-lexical linguistic sound patterns are stored within the same fronto-temporal network that stores higher-level linguistic knowledge and supports word and sentence comprehension.