The Japanese journal of neuropsychology

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ArticleTitle	Large-scale brain networks in the left hemisphere for language understanding
Language	J
AuthorList	Toshio Inui
Affiliation	Department of Intelligence Science and Technology, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University
Publication	Japanese Journal of Neuropsychology: 30 (4), 284-295, 2014
Received
Accepted
Abstract	In the first part of this paper, the brain network structure in the model of language learning and understanding (Inui, 1998) was verified based on recent tractographic findings. These studies revealed the existence of connections between brain areas hypothesized in the model. Second, a large number of cognitive neuroscientific and neuropsychological researches so far about the brain areas involved in lexical processing, especially for content words and function words, was reviewed and summarized. In a neural network model of language acquisition and comprehension by Dominey, Inui, and Hoen (2009), the component mechanism for comprehension was selectively focused and overviewed; this model could explain several recent findings in neurolinguistics. Finally, recent hypothesis (Inui, 2010) was introduced with respect to the mechanisms underlying the processing of hierarchical structure of complex sentences and understanding the meaning of simple sentences. For the hierarchical processing of complex sentences, BA9 would be involved to switch between the levels of hierarchies. For the comprehension of simple sentences, on the other hand, it would be implemented by phase synchronization in the global brain network. Recently this hypothesis was supported by our EEG studies.
Keywords	language understanding, tractography, syntactic understanding, phase synchronization, hierarchical switching