A syntactic specialization for Broca's area

TLDR

Despite numerous aphasia and functional imaging studies, the exact correlation between cortical language areas and subcomponents of the linguistic system has not been established. The study used fMRI to identify cortical areas specifically involved in syntactic processing. The experiment contrasted sentences with grammatical errors against sentences with spelling errors to isolate syntactic processing. Ungrammatical sentences elicited greater activation in cortical language areas, especially Broca's area, than spelling‑error sentences, providing direct evidence of a syntactic specialization for Broca's area and supporting distinct language modules.

Abstract

Despite numerous aphasia and functional imaging studies, the exact correlation between cortical language areas and subcomponents of the linguistic system has not been established. Here, we used functional MRI to identify cortical areas specifically involved in syntactic processing. An experimental design contrasted sentences containing grammatical errors with sentences containing spelling errors. The ungrammatical sentences produced more activation in cortical language areas than did the sentences with spelling errors, and the difference in activation was significantly greater in Broca's area than in Wernicke's area or in the angular gyrus/supramarginal gyrus. The present findings provide direct evidence of a syntactic specialization for Broca's area and establish the existence of distinct modules for our knowledge of language.