Abstract
Neural representations of words are thought to have a complex spatio-temporal cortical basis. It has been suggested that spoken word recognition is not a process of feed-forward computations from phonetic to lexical forms, but rather involves the online integration of bottom-up input with stored lexical knowledge. Using direct neural recordings from the temporal lobe, we examined cortical responses to words and pseudowords. We found that neural populations were not only sensitive to lexical status (real vs. pseudo), but also to cohort size (number of words matching the phonetic input at each time point) and cohort frequency (lexical frequency of those words). These lexical variables modulated neural activity from the posterior to anterior temporal lobe, and also dynamically as the stimuli unfolded on a millisecond time scale. Our findings indicate that word recognition is not purely modular, but relies on rapid and online integration of multiple sources of lexical knowledge.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 66-75 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Brain and Language |
Volume | 147 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Aug 1 2015 |
Funding
The authors would like to thank Connie Cheung, Angela Ren, and Susanne Gahl for technical assistance and valuable comments on drafts of this work, and Stephen Wilson for stimulus design. E.S.C. was funded by a National Science Foundation Research Fellowship. M.K.L. was funded by a National Institutes of Health National Research Service Award F32-DC013486 and by an Innovative Research Grant from the Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind. E.F.C. was funded by National Institutes of Health Grants R00-NS065120, DP2-OD00862 and R01-DC012379, and the McKnight Foundation. E.F.C. was supported by National Institutes of Health Grants DP2-OD00862 and R01-DC012379 , Bowes Foundation, Curci Foundation, and McKnight Foundation. Edward Chang is a New York Stem Cell Foundation – Robertson Investigator. This research was supported by The New York Stem Cell Foundation .
Keywords
- Electrocorticography (ECoG)
- Lexical statistics
- Pseudowords
- Temporal lobe
- Word comprehension
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
- Speech and Hearing
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Language and Linguistics
- Linguistics and Language