Speech prosody enhances the neural processing of syntax
- Author(s)
- Giulio Degano, Peter W Donhauser, Laura Gwilliams, Paola Merlo, Narly Golestani
- Abstract
Human language relies on the correct processing of syntactic information, as it is essential for successful communication between speakers. As an abstract level of language, syntax has often been studied separately from the physical form of the speech signal, thus often masking the interactions that can promote better syntactic processing in the human brain. However, behavioral and neural evidence from adults suggests the idea that prosody and syntax interact, and studies in infants support the notion that prosody assists language learning. Here we analyze a MEG dataset to investigate how acoustic cues, specifically prosody, interact with syntactic representations in the brains of native English speakers. More specifically, to examine whether prosody enhances the cortical encoding of syntactic representations, we decode syntactic phrase boundaries directly from brain activity, and evaluate possible modulations of this decoding by the prosodic boundaries. Our findings demonstrate that the presence of prosodic boundaries improves the neural representation of phrase boundaries, indicating the facilitative role of prosodic cues in processing abstract linguistic features. This work has implications for interactive models of how the brain processes different linguistic features. Future research is needed to establish the neural underpinnings of prosody-syntax interactions in languages with different typological characteristics.
- Organisation(s)
- Vienna Cognitive Science Hub, Department of Behavioral and Cognitive Biology
- External organisation(s)
- Université de Genève, Ernst Strüngmann Institute for Neuroscience, Stanford University
- Journal
- Communications Biology
- Volume
- 7
- No. of pages
- 10
- ISSN
- 2399-3642
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-024-06444-7
- Publication date
- 06-2024
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 602040 Psycholinguistics, 301401 Brain research, 602036 Neurolinguistics
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Agricultural and Biological Sciences(all), Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology(all), Medicine (miscellaneous)
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/speech-prosody-enhances-the-neural-processing-of-syntax(9a2c7ae9-606b-49be-a908-2846ba23ecfd).html