Involvement of the anterior insula and frontal operculum during wh-question comprehension of wh-in-situ Korean language

TL;DR

This study uses fMRI to explore brain activity during comprehension of Korean wh-questions, finding key roles for the anterior insula and frontal operculum.

Contribution

Identifies specific brain regions involved in processing wh-questions in wh-in-situ languages like Korean.

Findings

Left anterior insula and bilateral frontal operculum showed increased activation during wh-question comprehension.

Activation was consistent regardless of wh-element position or scrambling in the sentence.

Results highlight the interaction between salience/attention and syntactic systems in understanding wh-questions.

Abstract

In this research, we employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the neurological basis for understanding wh-questions in wh-in-situ languages such as Korean, where wh-elements maintain their original positions instead of moving explicitly within the sentence. Our hypothesis centered on the role of the salience and attention network in comprehending wh-questions in wh-in-situ languages, such as the discernment of wh-elements, the demarcation between interrogative types, and the allocation of cognitive resources towards essential constituents vis-à-vis subordinate elements in order to capture the speaker’s communicative intent. We explored subject and object wh-questions and scrambled wh-questions, contrasting them with yes/no questions in Korean. Increased activation was observed in the left anterior insula and bilateral frontal operculum, irrespective of the wh-position or scrambling of wh-element. These results suggest the interaction between the salience and attentional system and the syntactic linguistic system, particularly the left anterior insula and bilateral frontal operculum, in comprehending wh-questions in wh-in-situ languages.

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