Cortical thickness and surface area of left anterior temporal areas affects processing of phonological cues to morphosyntax.

Lack of methods to experimentally assess the perceptual processing of sound features and allow one to measure differences in phonological proficiency has been a limitation for speech processing studies in native speakers. Tonal features associated with Swedish word-stems, word accents, which cue grammatical suffixes, constitute, however, such sound features that can be exploited to generate measures of reliance on morphosyntactically relevant phonological information during word processing. Specifically, there is a natural variance between native speakers in response time (RT) difference between phonologically valid and invalid word accent-suffix combinations that can be used to quantify perceptual phonological proficiency.

Cortical thickness of Broca's area and right homologue is related to grammar learning aptitude and pitch discrimination proficiency.

Aptitude for and proficiency in acquiring new languages varies in the human population but their neural bases are largely unknown. We investigated the influence of cortical thickness on language learning predictors measured by the LLAMA tests and a pitch-change discrimination test. The LLAMA tests are first language-independent assessments of language learning aptitude for vocabulary, phonetic working memory, sound-symbol correspondence (not used in this study), and grammatical inferencing.

Cortical thickness of planum temporale and pars opercularis in native language tone processing.

The present study investigated the relationship between linguistic tone processing and cortical thickness of bilateral planum temporale (PT) and pars opercularis of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFGpo). Swedish tones on word stems function as cues to upcoming endings. Correlating structural brain imaging data with participants' response time patterns for suffixes, we found that thicker cortex in the left PT was associated with greater reliance on tones to anticipate upcoming inflections on real words.

Time-Driven Effects on Processing Relative Clauses.

The present response time study investigated how a hypothesized time-based working memory constraint of 2-3 s affects the resolution of grammatical and semantic dependencies. Congruent and incongruent object relative (OR) and subject relative sentences were read at different presentation rates so that the distance between dependent words was either shorter or longer than 2-3 s. Incongruent OR sentences showed an effect of presentation rate.