Table Of ContentBrain Research in Language
LITERACY STUDIES
VOLUME 1
Series Editor:
R. Malatesha Joshi,Texas A&M University, USA
Editorial Board:
Linnea Ehri, CUNY Graduate School, USA
George Hynd, Purdue University, USA
Richard Olson, University of Colorado, USA
Pieter Reitsma, Vrije University Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Rebecca Treiman, Washington University in St. Louis, USA
Usha Goswami, University of Cambridge, UK
Jane Oakhill, University of Sussex, Brighton, JK
Philip Seymour, University of Dundee, UK
Guinevere Eden, Georgetown University Medical Center, USA
Catherine McBride Chang, Chinese University of Hong Kong, China
While language defines humanity, literacy defines civilization. Understandably, illiteracy or
difficulties in acquiring literacy skills have become a major concern of our technological
society. A conservative estimate of the prevalence of literacy problems would put the figure at
more than a billion people in the world. Because of the seriousness of the problem, research in
literacy acquisition and its breakdown is pursued with enormous vigor and persistence by
experts from diverse backgrounds such as cognitive psychology, neuroscience, linguistics and
education. This, of course, has resulted in a plethora of data, and consequently it has become
difficult to integrate this abundance of information into a coherent body because of the
artificial barriers that exist among different professional specialties. The purpose of the
proposed series is to bring together the available research studies into a coherent body of
knowledge. Publications in this series are intended for use by educators, clinicians and
research scientists in the above-mentioned specialties. Some of the titles suitable for the
Series are: fMRI, brain imaging techniques and reading skills, orthography and literacy; and
research based techniques for improving decoding, vocabulary, spelling, and comprehension
skills.
The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.
Zvia Breznitz
(Editor)
Brain Research in Language
Zvia Breznitz
University of Haifa
Haifa 31905
Israel
[email protected]
Series Editor:
R. Malatesha Joshi
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843
USA
Library of Congress Control Number: 2007935911
ISBN-13: 978-0-387-74979-2 e-ISBN-13: 978-0-387-74980-8
Printed on acid-free paper.
(cid:164) 2008 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.
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CONTENTS
Introduction: Brain Research in Language .............................................................1
Zvia Breznitz
1. Neurobiological Correlates of Dyslexia..............................................................7
Zvia Breznitz and Lilach Lebovitz
2. Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) in the Study of Dyslexia.............................51
Shelley Shaul
3. Auditory P2 is Reduced in 5 Month Old Infants from Dyslexic
Families................................................................................................................93
Pieter H. Been, Theo H. van Leeuwen, Marieke van Herten,
Ben Maassen, Aryan van der Leij and Frans Zwarts
4. Electrophysiological Functional Imaging of Auditory Processing
in Humans.........................................................................................................111
Hillel Pratt
5. Overlapping Tasks Methodology as a Tool for Investigating
Language Perception........................................................................................125
Werner Sommer and Annette Hohlfeld
6. A Sampler of Event-Related Brain Potential (ERP) Analyses
of Language Processing...................................................................................153
Marta Kutas and Katherine A. Delong
7. Processing the Grammatical Function of Words in Sentence
Reading..............................................................................................................187
Mark Leikin
vi Contents
8. Timing the Metaphoric Brain.........................................................................205
Abraham Goldstein, Yossi Arzouan and Miriam Faust
9. EEG Correlates of Hemispheric Word Recognition.....................................225
Eran Zaidel, Andrew Hill and Scott Weems
10. Brain Mapping of Language Using High Frequency Gamma
Oscillations in the Electrocorticography........................................................247
Alon Sinai
Index........................................................................................................................275
BRAIN RESEARCH IN LANGUAGE
Zvia Breznitz
Neurocognitive Research Laboratory, Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Haifa 31905
Israel
The human brain has existed for approximately 60,000 years
while the alphabetic code has been in use for only 5000 years. It can
therefore be argued that the ability to read is not part of our
evolutionary heritage, as no brain system was specifically developed
for the purposes of reading. The reading process is a highly composite
cognitive task, which relies on brain systems that were originally
devoted to other functions. In most cases, the reading process is
successful, but in some cases it is not. Reading involves the decoding
and comprehension of printed materials. Word decoding implies the
activation of different brain entities such as the visual and auditory
modalities and the orthographic, phonological, and semantic systems.
Each entity has a different function in the reading process, and each
has a different biological structure. Each is activated in different brain
areas, and each processes information in a different manner and at a
different speed. In addition, as a cognitive process, reading is based on
information processing mechanisms and requires highly complex
information processing skills. As such, this cognitive activity varies
along the different stages of the information processing system.
During the input stage, attention, perception and discrimination of
alphabetic symbols in the visual and acoustic modalities are required.
In the processing stage, activation of these symbols in short term
memory (STM) and working memory (WM) is necessary, as are
interpretations and retrieval of alphabetic representations from long
2 Zvia Breznitz
term memory (LTM) and the mental lexicon (ML). At this stage, the
orthographic, phonological and semantic systems are activated. During
the output stage, reading requires activation of various motor systems.
This process ends with the reader’s responses. The complex nature of
this process poses a major challenge for the human brain, which
proves too much for some readers.
The majority of studies in this area have implemented behavioral
methodologies, which provide information concerning the entire
cognitive sequence at the conclusion of processing only, in the reader’s
output. The reader arrives at this stage following the completion of
sensory, cognitive and motor processes (Bentin, 1989). As such,
behavioral measures cannot specify all of the covert component opera-
tions that contribute to reading, nor can they determine the relative
processing times required by the individual stages. Furthermore, they
cannot determine which processes occur serially, which occur in
parallel and which overlap in time (Brandeis & Lehmann, 1994;
Johnson, 1995). This makes it difficult to determine, on the basis of
behavioral measures alone, the extent to which dysfunction or slowness
at any particular stage of processing contributes to reading deficits.
However, recent advancements in the field of neuroscience and
cognitive development have added a new dimension with regard to the
research into the universal and domain specific aspects of reading
with the advent of innovative neurophysiological measurement tech-
niques. The most common are electroencephalography (EEG) and
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). These two methods
provide researchers with the opportunity to examine, in-depth, the
neural correlates of the reading processing with precise temporal and
spatial resolutions, respectively. EEG techniques assess on-line
processing of the cognitive activity utilizing Event Related Potential
(ERP) methodology. This method permits direct observation of infor-
mation processing at different levels of analysis, and can provide
crucial information by means of real-time imaging of the neural
system’s responses to sensory stimulation (Bentin, 1989). Thus, it
enables us to trace on-line the speed at which information is processed
during the various cognitive stages of the reading activity.
The fMRI method focuses on the source of brain activity with
time resolution that is not sufficient to trace temporal brain activation
during the reading process. Even though these two methodologies are
complimentary, it is important to note that precise time measurement
Brain Research in Language 3
of temporal resolution is a critical factor in reading research, and as
such, the advantage of EEG measurement is clear.
Tracing the source of brain activity during reading is crucial for
understanding both the accurate and impaired process and led various
researchers to focus on developing new approaches for estimating the
source localization of brain activity from ongoing EEG measures
during performance of cognitive tasks such as reading, i.e., Low
Resolution Electromagnetic Tomography (LORETA). The extent to
which this estimation is similar to fMRI results remains unclear.
The current book contains chapters based on a series of lectures
given at the annual conference held by the Department of Learning
Disabilities at the University of Haifa in June 2006 on “The Use of
Brain Activity Measures in Reading Research.” The lectures presented
data obtained from various studies employing behavioral, electro-
physiological and imaging methodologies in different languages
focusing on the regular reading process and the dyslexic population.
The first two chapters review the use of imaging and electro-
physiological techniques employing the Evoked Related Potential
(ERP) methodology in reading research. Data from studies focusing
on measuring the brain activity of regular and dyslexic readers is
presented.
The first contribution by Breznitz and Lebovitz offers evidence
from post-mortem, structural and functional imaging studies in which
the brains of dyslexic individuals are compared to those of regular
readers. As phonological processing is a key concept in our under-
standing of the regular and impaired reading process, the majority of
studies in the field focus primarily on the nature of neural activity
within the phonological system. Data concerning the effect of
phonological intervention training on the brain activity of dyslexics
are discussed. Moreover, based on the fact that reading is an act of
perceiving printed materials from the printed page via the visual
system, data from studies focusing on activation in the visual system
are also presented.
The second chapter contributed by Shaul and Breznitz surveys
the different ERP components characteristic of brain activity during
the reading process as well as the compelling results stemming from
studies implementing this technique. The aim of this review is to gain
a better understanding of the underlying causes of reading as a
