Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-8-2013
Journal
The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience
Volume
33
Issue
19
First Page
8528
Last Page
8533
URL with Digital Object Identifier
10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0618-13.2013
Abstract
Syntax is the core computational component of language. A longstanding idea about syntactic processing is that it is generally not available to conscious access, operating autonomously and automatically. However, there is little direct neurocognitive evidence on this issue. By measuring event-related potentials while human observers performed a novel cross-modal distraction task, we demonstrated that syntactic violations that were not consciously detected nonetheless produced a characteristic early neural response pattern, and also significantly delayed reaction times to a concurrent task. This early neural response was distinct from later neural activity that was observed only to syntactic violations that were consciously detected. These findings provide direct evidence that the human brain reacts to violations of syntax even when these violations are not consciously detected, indicating that even highly complex computational processes such as syntactic processing can occur outside the narrow window of conscious awareness.
