Neural Correlates of Subliminal Language Processing. Tuesday language

  link to the study

Abstract

Language is a high-level cognitive function, so exploring the neural correlates of unconscious language processing is essential for understanding the limits of unconscious processing in general. The results of several functional magnetic resonance imaging studies have suggested that unconscious lexical and semantic processing is confined to the posterior temporal lobe, without involvement of the frontal lobe-the regions that are indispensable for conscious language processing. However, previous studies employed a similarly designed masked priming paradigm with briefly presented single and contextually unrelated words. It is thus possible, that the stimulation level was insufficiently strong to be detected in the high-level frontal regions. Here, in a high-resolution fMRI and multivariate pattern analysis study we explored the neural correlates of subliminal language processing using a novel paradigm, where written meaningful sentences were suppressed from awareness for extended duration using continuous flash suppression. We found that subjectively and objectively invisible meaningful sentences and unpronounceable nonwords could be discriminated not only in the left posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS), but critically, also in the left middle frontal gyrus. We conclude that frontal lobes play a role in unconscious language processing and that activation of the frontal lobes per se might not be sufficient for achieving conscious awareness.

 

(2015) comment: ...until, I think, expressed inferences of self (descriptions of 'us', or subjects, or consciousness) remain delineated within notions of singular narratives... well, that... doesn't fit the, by now oceans of, data. And as important, I think again... confounding language (temporal representation) with communication and systems that create and express through language (evolved, evolving and entropic, expressed in the present,)  ...we'll still have a lot of... evident misunderstanding. In any and every moment there are so many languages, but only one expression. Or, by now it seems fairly clear, to move forward, models should move not merely away from though include modularity, connectome, network, ecc but toward as yet unknown but predictable specificity, uncertainty and dialoguing systems leading hierarchically and through inhibition to expression. Harder by far, likely, on almost every strata but...probably unavoidable, and sort of wonderful - to be only near the beginning of a beginning...