Functional Neuroimaging Studies of Written Sentence Comprehension

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Abstract
Sentences convey relationships between the meanings of words, such as who is accomplishing an action or receiving it. Functional neuroimaging based on positron-emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging has been used to identify areas of the brain involved in structuring sentences and determining aspects of meaning associated with sentences. This article reviews this literature, beginning with studies that compare sentences to low-level baselines, which identify brain regions involved in many language functions, and progressing to more narrowly constructed experiments that contrast one sentence type with another, which are designed to identify brain regions involved in quite specific sentence-level processing operations. These studies suggest that at least some syntactic and sentence-level interpretive operations, and/or the resource system that supports them, utilize the same brain areas regardless of whether language is spoken or written. They also suggest that several brain regions may provide support in these processes and that there are individual differences in what parts of the brain are involved in these functions.