Neural correlates of semantic prediction and resolution in sentence processing

Abstract

Most brain-imaging studies of language comprehension focus on activity following meaningful stimuli. Testing adult human participants with high-density EEG, we show that, already before the presentation of a critical word, context-induced semantic predictions are reflected by a neuro physiological index, which we therefore call the semantic readiness potential (SRP).TheSRPprecedes critical words if a previous sentence context constrains the upcoming semantic content (high-constraint contexts), but not in unpredictable (low-constraint) contexts. Specific semanticpredictionswereindexedbySRPsources within the motor system-indor solateral hand motorareas for expected hand-relatedwords (e.g., “write”), but in ventral motor cortex for face-related words (“talk”). Compared with affirmative sentences, negated ones led to medial prefrontal andmorewidespread motor source activation, the latter being consistent with predictive semantic computation of alternatives to the negated expected concept. Predictive processing of semantic alternatives in negated sentences is further supported by a negative-going eventrelated potential at ~400 ms (N400), which showed the typical enhancement to semantically incongruent sentence endings only in highconstraint affirmative contexts, but not to high-constraint negated ones. These braindynamicsreveal the interplay between semantic prediction and resolution (match vs error) processing in sentence understanding.