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Frequency-specific brain dynamics related to prediction during language comprehension

View ORCID ProfileKristijan Armeni, View ORCID ProfileRoel M. Willems, View ORCID ProfileAntal van den Bosch, View ORCID ProfileJan-Mathijs Schoffelen
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/399733
Kristijan Armeni
1Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
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  • For correspondence: k.armeni@donders.ru.nl
Roel M. Willems
1Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
2Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
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Antal van den Bosch
2Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
3Meertens Institute, The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam
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Jan-Mathijs Schoffelen
1Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
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Abstract

The brain’s remarkable capacity to process spoken language virtually in real time requires fast and efficient information processing machinery. In this study, we investigated how frequency-specific brain dynamics relate to models of probabilistic language prediction during auditory narrative comprehension. We recorded MEG activity while participants were listening to auditory stories in Dutch. Using trigram statistical language models, we estimated for every word in a story its conditional probability of occurrence. On the basis of word probabilities, we computed how unexpected the current word is given its context (word perplexity) and how (un)predictable the current linguistic context is (word entropy). We then evaluated whether source-reconstructed MEG oscillations at different frequency bands are modulated as a function of these language processing metrics. We show that theta-band source dynamics are increased in high relative to low entropy states, likely reflecting lexical computations. Beta-band dynamics are increased in situations of low word entropy and perplexity possibly reflecting maintenance of ongoing cognitive context. These findings lend support to the idea that the brain engages in the active generation and evaluation of predicted language based on the statistical properties of the input signal.

Footnotes

  • Discussion section expanded; supplementary materials included; reanalysis of coherence; additional control analyses documented; figures revised for clarity; correction of typos.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted May 10, 2019.
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Frequency-specific brain dynamics related to prediction during language comprehension
Kristijan Armeni, Roel M. Willems, Antal van den Bosch, Jan-Mathijs Schoffelen
bioRxiv 399733; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/399733
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Frequency-specific brain dynamics related to prediction during language comprehension
Kristijan Armeni, Roel M. Willems, Antal van den Bosch, Jan-Mathijs Schoffelen
bioRxiv 399733; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/399733

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