Cargando…

Grip Force Reveals the Context Sensitivity of Language-Induced Motor Activity during “Action Words” Processing: Evidence from Sentential Negation

BACKGROUND: Studies demonstrating the involvement of motor brain structures in language processing typically focus on time windows beyond the latencies of lexical-semantic access. Consequently, such studies remain inconclusive regarding whether motor brain structures are recruited directly in langua...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Aravena, Pia, Delevoye-Turrell, Yvonne, Deprez, Viviane, Cheylus, Anne, Paulignan, Yves, Frak, Victor, Nazir, Tatjana
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3515598/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23227164
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050287
_version_ 1782252217513803776
author Aravena, Pia
Delevoye-Turrell, Yvonne
Deprez, Viviane
Cheylus, Anne
Paulignan, Yves
Frak, Victor
Nazir, Tatjana
author_facet Aravena, Pia
Delevoye-Turrell, Yvonne
Deprez, Viviane
Cheylus, Anne
Paulignan, Yves
Frak, Victor
Nazir, Tatjana
author_sort Aravena, Pia
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Studies demonstrating the involvement of motor brain structures in language processing typically focus on time windows beyond the latencies of lexical-semantic access. Consequently, such studies remain inconclusive regarding whether motor brain structures are recruited directly in language processing or through post-linguistic conceptual imagery. In the present study, we introduce a grip-force sensor that allows online measurements of language-induced motor activity during sentence listening. We use this tool to investigate whether language-induced motor activity remains constant or is modulated in negative, as opposed to affirmative, linguistic contexts. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Participants listened to spoken action target words in either affirmative or negative sentences while holding a sensor in a precision grip. The participants were asked to count the sentences containing the name of a country to ensure attention. The grip force signal was recorded continuously. The action words elicited an automatic and significant enhancement of the grip force starting at approximately 300 ms after target word onset in affirmative sentences; however, no comparable grip force modulation was observed when these action words occurred in negative contexts. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our findings demonstrate that this simple experimental paradigm can be used to study the online crosstalk between language and the motor systems in an ecological and economical manner. Our data further confirm that the motor brain structures that can be called upon during action word processing are not mandatorily involved; the crosstalk is asymmetrically governed by the linguistic context and not vice versa.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-3515598
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2012
publisher Public Library of Science
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-35155982012-12-07 Grip Force Reveals the Context Sensitivity of Language-Induced Motor Activity during “Action Words” Processing: Evidence from Sentential Negation Aravena, Pia Delevoye-Turrell, Yvonne Deprez, Viviane Cheylus, Anne Paulignan, Yves Frak, Victor Nazir, Tatjana PLoS One Research Article BACKGROUND: Studies demonstrating the involvement of motor brain structures in language processing typically focus on time windows beyond the latencies of lexical-semantic access. Consequently, such studies remain inconclusive regarding whether motor brain structures are recruited directly in language processing or through post-linguistic conceptual imagery. In the present study, we introduce a grip-force sensor that allows online measurements of language-induced motor activity during sentence listening. We use this tool to investigate whether language-induced motor activity remains constant or is modulated in negative, as opposed to affirmative, linguistic contexts. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Participants listened to spoken action target words in either affirmative or negative sentences while holding a sensor in a precision grip. The participants were asked to count the sentences containing the name of a country to ensure attention. The grip force signal was recorded continuously. The action words elicited an automatic and significant enhancement of the grip force starting at approximately 300 ms after target word onset in affirmative sentences; however, no comparable grip force modulation was observed when these action words occurred in negative contexts. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our findings demonstrate that this simple experimental paradigm can be used to study the online crosstalk between language and the motor systems in an ecological and economical manner. Our data further confirm that the motor brain structures that can be called upon during action word processing are not mandatorily involved; the crosstalk is asymmetrically governed by the linguistic context and not vice versa. Public Library of Science 2012-12-05 /pmc/articles/PMC3515598/ /pubmed/23227164 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050287 Text en © 2012 Aravena et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Aravena, Pia
Delevoye-Turrell, Yvonne
Deprez, Viviane
Cheylus, Anne
Paulignan, Yves
Frak, Victor
Nazir, Tatjana
Grip Force Reveals the Context Sensitivity of Language-Induced Motor Activity during “Action Words” Processing: Evidence from Sentential Negation
title Grip Force Reveals the Context Sensitivity of Language-Induced Motor Activity during “Action Words” Processing: Evidence from Sentential Negation
title_full Grip Force Reveals the Context Sensitivity of Language-Induced Motor Activity during “Action Words” Processing: Evidence from Sentential Negation
title_fullStr Grip Force Reveals the Context Sensitivity of Language-Induced Motor Activity during “Action Words” Processing: Evidence from Sentential Negation
title_full_unstemmed Grip Force Reveals the Context Sensitivity of Language-Induced Motor Activity during “Action Words” Processing: Evidence from Sentential Negation
title_short Grip Force Reveals the Context Sensitivity of Language-Induced Motor Activity during “Action Words” Processing: Evidence from Sentential Negation
title_sort grip force reveals the context sensitivity of language-induced motor activity during “action words” processing: evidence from sentential negation
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3515598/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23227164
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0050287
work_keys_str_mv AT aravenapia gripforcerevealsthecontextsensitivityoflanguageinducedmotoractivityduringactionwordsprocessingevidencefromsententialnegation
AT delevoyeturrellyvonne gripforcerevealsthecontextsensitivityoflanguageinducedmotoractivityduringactionwordsprocessingevidencefromsententialnegation
AT deprezviviane gripforcerevealsthecontextsensitivityoflanguageinducedmotoractivityduringactionwordsprocessingevidencefromsententialnegation
AT cheylusanne gripforcerevealsthecontextsensitivityoflanguageinducedmotoractivityduringactionwordsprocessingevidencefromsententialnegation
AT paulignanyves gripforcerevealsthecontextsensitivityoflanguageinducedmotoractivityduringactionwordsprocessingevidencefromsententialnegation
AT frakvictor gripforcerevealsthecontextsensitivityoflanguageinducedmotoractivityduringactionwordsprocessingevidencefromsententialnegation
AT nazirtatjana gripforcerevealsthecontextsensitivityoflanguageinducedmotoractivityduringactionwordsprocessingevidencefromsententialnegation