Continuous theta-burst stimulation demonstrates language-network-specific causal effects on syntactic processing

Abstract

Hierarchical syntactic structure processing is proposed to be at the core of the human language faculty. Syntactic processing is supported by the left fronto-temporal language network, including a core area in the inferior frontal gyrus as well as its interaction with the posterior temporal lobe (i.e., “IFG + pTL”). Moreover, during complex syntactic processes, left IFG also interacts with executive control regions, such as the superior parietal lobule (SPL). However, the functional relevance of these network interactions is largely unclear. In particular, it remains to be demonstrated whether the language network plays a specific causal role in comparatively challenging syntactic processes, separable from the interaction between IFG and other general cognitive regions (i.e., “IFG + SPL” in the present study). The present study was designed to address this question. Thirty healthy adult Chinese native speakers underwent four continuous theta-burst stimulation (cTBS) sessions: stimulation over IFG, stimulation over IFG + pTL, stimulation over IFG + SPL, and sham stimulation over IFG + irrelevant region in a pseudo-randomized order. In each session, participants were required to label the syntactic categories of jabberwocky sequences retaining real Chinese function words (e.g., “ム了ウ” is labeled as a verb phrase (VP): “[ VP [V了]N]”, similar to “ziff-ed a wug”, where “ziff” and “wug” are nonsense pseudowords, and the whole phrase is a VP). Contrasted with sham cTBS, change percentage of accuracy rates (ΔACCR%), reaction times (ΔRT%), and coefficient of variation (ΔCV%) were calculated and compared across conditions. First-order behavioral results showed a significantly higher ΔCV% after stimulating IFG + pTL compared to stimulating the IFG + SPL, indicating that syntactic processing became more unstable. Second-order representational similarity analysis (RSA) results revealed that cTBS effects on IFG + pTL selectively depended on the hierarchical embedding depth, a key measure of syntactic hierarchical complexity, whereas the effects on IFG + SPL were sensitive to the dependency length, a crucial index reflecting the working memory load. Collectively, these findings reveal the specific causal relevance of the language areas for hierarchical syntactic processing, separable from other general cognitive (such as working memory) capacities. These results shed light on the uniqueness and the specific causal role of the language network for the human language faculty, further supporting the causally separable view of the functional dissociation between the language network and the domain-general/multiple-demand network.