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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access originally published online on May 15, 2007
Cerebral Cortex 2008 18(2):278-288; doi:10.1093/cercor/bhm053
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© 2007 The Authors
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

The Neural Bases of the Lexical Effect: An fMRI Investigation

Emily B. Myers and Sheila E. Blumstein

Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Brown University, Box 1978, Providence, RI 02912, USA

Address correspondence to: Emily Myers, Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences, Brown University, Box 1978, Providence, RI 02912, USA. Email: Emily_B_Myers{at}Brown.edu

The lexical effect is a phenomenon whereby lexical information influences the perception of the phonetic category boundary for stimuli from word–nonword continua. At issue is whether this effect is due to "top-down" influence of upper levels of processing on perceptual processing, or instead is due to decision-stage processes. In this study, brain activity was monitored using functional magnetic resonance imaging as subjects performed a phonetic categorization task on items taken from 2 continua in which one end of the continuum was a real word and the other was not (gift–kift and giss–kiss). If the lexical effect has a perceptual basis, modulation of activation should be seen as a function of the lexical effect in areas such as the superior temporal gyri (STG) which have previously been implicated in perceptual processing. In contrast, if the effect is purely due to decision-related factors, such modulation would be expected only in areas which have been linked to executive processes, such as frontal and midline structures. Modulation of activation as a function of the lexically biased shift in phonetic category boundary was observed in the STG bilaterally as well as in frontal and midline structures. This activation pattern suggests that the lexical effect has at minimum a perceptual component, in addition to an executive decision-related component. These results challenge the view that lexical effects on phonetic boundary placement are due solely to postperceptual, decision-stage processes, and support those models of language processing which allow for higher-level lexical information to directly influence the perception of incoming speech.

Key Words: Ganong effect • lexical processing • neuroimaging • superior temporal gyrus • top-down processes

Funding to pay the Open Access publication charges for this article was provided by NIH DC006220 [GenBank] .


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