Editing Neurolinguistics (section)

===Experimental techniques===
Neurolinguists employ a variety of experimental techniques in order to use brain imaging to draw conclusions about how language is represented and processed in the brain.  These techniques include the ''subtraction'' paradigm, ''[[Mismatch negativity|mismatch]] design'', ''violation-based'' studies, various forms of ''[[Priming (psychology)|priming]]'', and ''direct stimulation'' of the brain.

====Subtraction====
Many language studies, particularly in [[fMRI]], use the subtraction paradigm,<ref name="Grabowski">Grabowski, T., and Damasio, A." (2000). Investigating language with functional neuroimaging. ''San Diego, CA, US: Academic Press. 14'', 425-461.</ref> in which brain activation in a task thought to involve some aspect of language processing is compared against activation in a baseline task thought to involve similar non-linguistic processes but not to involve the linguistic process. For example, activations while participants read words may be compared to baseline activations while participants read strings of random letters (in attempt to isolate activation related to lexical processing&mdash;the processing of real words), or activations while participants read [[syntax|syntactically]] complex sentences may be compared to baseline activations while participants read simpler sentences.

====Mismatch paradigm====
{{Main|Mismatch negativity}}
The mismatch negativity (MMN) is a rigorously documented ERP component frequently used in neurolinguistic experiments.<ref name="pulvermulleretal2008">{{cite journal | title=Syntax as a reflex: neurophysiological evidence for the early automaticity of syntactic processing | journal=Brain and Language | year=2008 | volume=104 | issue=3 | pmid=17624417 | last1=Pulvermüller |first1=Friedemann |author2=Yury Shtyrov; Anna S. Hasting; Robert P. Carlyon | pages=244&ndash;253 | doi=10.1016/j.bandl.2007.05.002| s2cid=13870754 }}</ref><ref name="pulvermullershtyrov2003">{{cite journal | last1=Pulvermüller | first1=Friedemann |author2=Yury Shtyrov | year=2003 | journal=NeuroImage | volume=20 | title=Automatic processing of grammar in the human brain as revealed by the mismatch negativity | pages=159&ndash;172 | doi=10.1016/S1053-8119(03)00261-1 | pmid=14527578 | issue=1| s2cid=27124567 }}</ref>  It is an electrophysiological response that occurs in the brain when a subject hears a "deviant" stimulus in a set of perceptually identical "standards" (as in the sequence ''s s s s s s s d d s s s s s s d s s s s s d'').<ref name="phillips">{{cite journal | last1=Phillips | first1=Colin |author2=T. Pellathy; A. Marantz; E. Yellin; K. Wexler; M. McGinnis; D. Poeppel; T. Roberts | year=2001 | title=Auditory cortex accesses phonological category: an MEG mismatch study | journal=Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience | volume=12 | issue=6 | pages=1038&ndash;1055 | doi=10.1162/08989290051137567| pmid=11177423 | citeseerx=10.1.1.201.5797 | s2cid=8686819 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal | title=Distributed neuronal networks for encoding category-specific semantic information: the mismatch negativity to action words | last1=Shtyrov | first1=Yury |author2=Olaf Hauk; Friedmann Pulvermüller | year=2004 | volume=19 | pages=1083&ndash;1092 | journal=European Journal of Neuroscience | doi=10.1111/j.0953-816X.2004.03126.x | pmid=15009156 | issue=4| s2cid=27238979 }}</ref>  Since the MMN is elicited only in response to a rare "oddball" stimulus in a set of other stimuli that are perceived to be the same, it has been used to test how speakers perceive sounds and organize stimuli categorically.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Näätänen | first1 = Risto | author-link = Risto Näätänen | year = 1997 | title = Language-specific phoneme representations revealed by electric and magnetic brain responses | journal = Nature | volume = 385 | issue = 6615| pages = 432–434 | doi=10.1038/385432a0 | last2 = Lehtokoski | first2 = Anne | last3 = Lennes | first3 = Mietta | last4 = Cheour | first4 = Marie | last5 = Huotilainen | first5 = Minna | last6 = Iivonen | first6 = Antti | last7 = Vainio | first7 = Martti | last8 = Alku | first8 = Paavo | last9 = Ilmoniemi | first9 = Risto J. | last10 = Luuk | first10 = Aavo | last11 = Allik | first11 = Jüri | last12 = Sinkkonen | first12 = Janne | last13 = Alho | first13 = Kimmo | pmid = 9009189| bibcode = 1997Natur.385..432N | s2cid = 4366960 | display-authors = 8 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal | title=The influence of meaning on the perception of speech sounds | last1=Kazanina | first1=Nina |author2=Colin Phillips; William Idsardi | year=2006 | journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America | pages=11381&ndash;11386 | doi=10.1073/pnas.0604821103 | volume=103 | pmid=16849423 | issue=30 | pmc=3020137| bibcode=2006PNAS..10311381K | doi-access=free }}</ref> For example, a landmark study by [[Colin Phillips]] and colleagues used the mismatch negativity as evidence that subjects, when presented with a series of speech sounds with [[Acoustics|acoustic]] parameters, perceived all the sounds as either /t/ or /d/ in spite of the acoustic variability, suggesting that the human brain has representations of abstract [[phoneme]]s&mdash;in other words, the subjects were "hearing" not the specific acoustic features, but only the abstract phonemes.<ref name="phillips"/>  In addition, the mismatch negativity has been used to study syntactic processing and the recognition of [[Lexical category|word category]].<ref name="pulvermulleretal2008"/><ref name="pulvermullershtyrov2003"/><ref>{{cite journal | title=Setting the stage for automatic syntax processing: the mismatch negativity as an indicator of syntactic priming | last1=Hasing | first1=Anna S. |author2=Sonja A. Kotz; Angela D. Friederici | journal=Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience | year=2007 | volume=19 | issue=3 | pmid=17335388 | pages=386&ndash;400 | doi=10.1162/jocn.2007.19.3.386| s2cid=3046335 }}</ref>

====Violation-based====
[[File:ComponentsofERP.svg|right|thumb|An [[event-related potential]]]]
Many studies in neurolinguistics take advantage of anomalies or ''violations'' of [[Syntax|syntactic]] or [[Semantics|semantic]] rules in experimental stimuli, and analyzing the brain responses elicited when a subject encounters these violations. For example, sentences beginning with phrases such as *''the garden was on the worked'',<ref>Example from Frisch et al. (2004: 195).</ref> which violates an English [[phrase structure rule]], often elicit a brain response called the [[early left anterior negativity]] (ELAN).<ref name="frisch194">{{cite journal | last1=Frisch | first1=Stefan |author2=Anja Hahne; Angela D. Friederici | title=Word category and verb&ndash;argument structure information in the dynamics of parsing | year=2004 | journal=Cognition | pmid=15168895 | volume=91 | issue=3 | doi=10.1016/j.cognition.2003.09.009 | pages=191–219 [194]| s2cid=44889189 }}</ref> Violation techniques have been in use since at least 1980,<ref name="frisch194"/> when Kutas and Hillyard first reported [[Event-related potential|ERP]] evidence that [[semantic]] violations elicited an N400 effect.<ref>{{cite journal | last1=Kutas | first1=M. |author2=S.A. Hillyard | year=1980 | title=Reading senseless sentences: brain potentials reflect semantic incongruity | journal=Science | volume=207 | pages=203–205 | doi=10.1126/science.7350657 | pmid=7350657 | issue=4427| bibcode=1980Sci...207..203K }}</ref>  Using similar methods, in 1992, Lee Osterhout first reported the [[P600 (neuroscience)|P600]] response to syntactic anomalies.<ref>{{cite journal | last1=Osterhout | first1=Lee |author2=Phillip J. Holcomb | year=1992 | title=Event-related Potentials Elicited by Grammatical Anomalies | journal=Psychophysiological Brain Research | pages=299–302}}</ref> Violation designs have also been used for hemodynamic studies (fMRI and PET): Embick and colleagues, for example, used grammatical and spelling violations to investigate the location of syntactic processing in the brain using fMRI.<ref name=embicketal/> Another common use of violation designs is to combine two kinds of violations in the same sentence and thus make predictions about how different language processes interact with one another; this type of crossing-violation study has been used extensively to investigate how [[Syntax|syntactic]] and [[Semantics|semantic]] processes interact while people read or hear sentences.<ref name="martin-loeches">{{cite journal | journal=Brain Research | year=2006 | title=Semantics prevalence over syntax during sentence processing: a brain potential study of noun–adjective agreement in Spanish | pmid=16678138  | doi=10.1016/j.brainres.2006.03.094| first1=Manuel | last1=Martín-Loeches |author2=Roland Nigbura; Pilar Casadoa; Annette Hohlfeldc; Werner Sommer | volume= 1093| issue=1 | pages=178&ndash;189| s2cid=1188462 }}</ref><ref name="frisch195">{{cite journal | last1=Frisch | first1=Stefan |author2=Anja Hahne; Angela D. Friederici | title=Word category and verb&ndash;argument structure information in the dynamics of parsing | year=2004 | journal=Cognition | pmid=15168895 | volume=91 | issue=3 | doi=10.1016/j.cognition.2003.09.009 | pages=191–219 [195]| s2cid=44889189 }}</ref>

====Priming====
{{Main|Priming (psychology)}}
In psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics, ''priming'' refers to the phenomenon whereby a subject can recognize a word more quickly if he or she has recently been presented with a word that is similar in meaning<ref name="athabasca"/> or [[Morphology (linguistics)|morphological]] makeup (i.e., composed of similar parts).<ref name="fiorentino"/> If a subject is presented with a "prime" word such as ''doctor'' and then a "target" word such as ''nurse'', if the subject has a faster-than-usual response time to ''nurse'' then the experimenter may assume that word ''nurse'' in the brain had already been accessed when the word ''doctor'' was accessed.<ref name="probe"/> Priming is used to investigate a wide variety of questions about how words are stored and retrieved in the brain<ref name="fiorentino"/><ref name="devlin">{{cite journal | title=Morphology and the internal structure of words | year=2004 |last1=Devlin |first1=Joseph T. |author2=Helen L. Jamison; Paul M. Matthews; Laura M. Gonnerman | pages=14984&ndash;14988 | pmid=15358857 | volume=101 | issue=41 | pmc=522020 | journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | doi=10.1073/pnas.0403766101| doi-access=free }}</ref> and how structurally complex sentences are processed.<ref name="zurif">{{cite journal | last1=Zurif | first1=E.B. |author2=D. Swinney; P. Prather; J. Solomon; C. Bushell | year=1993 | title=An on-line analysis of syntactic processing in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasia | journal=Brain and Language | pmid=8269334 | volume=45 | issue=3 | pages=448&ndash;464 | doi=10.1006/brln.1993.1054| s2cid=8791285 | doi-access=free }}</ref>

====Stimulation====
[[Transcranial magnetic stimulation]] (TMS), a new noninvasive<ref name="mayo">{{cite web | url=http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/transcranial-magnetic-stimulation/MY00185/DSECTION=risks | publisher=[[Mayo Clinic]] | title=Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation - Risks | access-date=15 December 2008}}</ref> technique for studying brain activity, uses powerful magnetic fields that are applied to the brain from outside the head.<ref name="nami">{{cite web | url=http://www.nami.org/Content/ContentGroups/Helpline1/Transcranial_Magnetic_Stimulation_(rTMS).htm | title=Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) | publisher=[[National Alliance on Mental Illness]] | access-date=15 December 2008 | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090108093742/http://www.nami.org/Content/ContentGroups/Helpline1/Transcranial_Magnetic_Stimulation_(rTMS).htm | archive-date=8 January 2009 | df=dmy-all }}</ref>  It is a method of exciting or interrupting brain activity in a specific and controlled location, and thus is able to imitate aphasic symptoms while giving the researcher more control over exactly which parts of the brain will be examined.<ref name="nami"/>  As such, it is a less invasive alternative to [[Electrocorticography#DCES|direct cortical stimulation]], which can be used for similar types of research but requires that the subject's scalp be removed, and is thus only used on individuals who are already undergoing a major brain operation (such as individuals undergoing surgery for [[epilepsy]]).<ref>{{cite journal | journal=Journal of Neurosurgery | title=Neurons in human epileptic cortex. Response to direct cortical stimulation | year=1981 | volume=55 | issue=6 | pages=904&ndash;8 | author1=A.R. Wyler |author2=A.A. Ward, Jr | pmid=7299464 | doi=10.3171/jns.1981.55.6.0904}}</ref>  The logic behind TMS and direct cortical stimulation is similar to the logic behind aphasiology: if a particular language function is impaired when a specific region of the brain is knocked out, then that region must be somehow implicated in that language function.  Few neurolinguistic studies to date have used TMS;<ref name="phillipssakai"/> direct cortical stimulation and [[Electrocorticography|cortical recording]] (recording brain activity using electrodes placed directly on the brain) have been used with [[Macaque|macaque monkeys]] to make predictions about the behavior of human brains.<ref>{{cite journal | year=2005 | journal=[[Trends (journals)|Trends in Cognitive Sciences]] | last=Hagoort | first=Peter | pmid=16054419 | title=On Broca, brain, and binding: a new framework | volume=9 | issue=9 | doi=10.1016/j.tics.2005.07.004 | pages=416–23| hdl=11858/00-001M-0000-0013-1E16-A | s2cid=2826729 | hdl-access=free }}</ref>