The Importance of Semantic Network Brain Regions in Integrating Prior Knowledge with an Ongoing Dialogue

  1. Petar P. Raykov
  2. James L. Keidel
  3. Jane Oakhill
  4. Chris M. Bird

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Abstract

To understand a dialogue, we need to know the topics that are being discussed. This enables us to integrate our knowledge of what was said previously to interpret the current dialogue. This study involved a large-scale behavioral experiment conducted online and a separate fMRI experiment, both testing human participants. In both, we selectively manipulated knowledge about the narrative content of dialogues presented in short videos. The clips were scenes from situation comedies that were split into two parts. The speech in the part 1 clips could either be presented normally or spectrally rotated to render it unintelligible. The part 2 clips that concluded the scenes were always presented normally. The behavioral experiment showed that knowledge of the preceding narrative boosted memory for the part 2 clips as well as increased the intersubject semantic similarity of recalled descriptions of the dialogues. The fMRI experiment replicated the finding that prior knowledge improved memory for the conclusions of the dialogues. Furthermore, prior knowledge strengthened temporal intersubject correlations in brain regions including the left angular gyrus and inferior frontal gyrus. Together, these findings show that (1) prior knowledge constrains the interpretation of a dialogue to be more similar across individuals; and (2), consistent with this, the activation of brain regions involved in semantic control processing is also more similar between individuals who share the same prior knowledge. Processing in these regions likely supports the activation and integration of prior knowledge, which helps people to better understand and remember dialogues as they unfold.

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  1. Version published to 10.1523/eneuro.0116-22.2022
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    SciScore for 10.1101/276683: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    This was done with Praat (version 6.0.15)
    Praat
    suggested: (Praat, RRID:SCR_016564)
    Data Analysis: Behavioural data was analysed using R and mixed effect models were fitted using the lmer and lmerTest packages.
    lmerTest
    suggested: (R package: lmerTest, RRID:SCR_015656)
    Data were analysed with SPM 12, the CoSMoMVPA toolbox (Oosterhof et al., 2016) and custom scripts in MATLAB (Version 2016b, The MathWorks, Inc., Natick, MA, USA).
    CoSMoMVPA
    suggested: (CoSMoMVPA, RRID:SCR_014519)
    MATLAB
    suggested: (MATLAB, RRID:SCR_001622)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We found bar graphs of continuous data. We recommend replacing bar graphs with more informative graphics, as many different datasets can lead to the same bar graph. The actual data may suggest different conclusions from the summary statistics. For more information, please see Weissgerber et al (2015).

    Results from JetFighter: Please consider improving the rainbow (“jet”) colormap(s) used on pages 24 and 23. At least one figure is not accessible to readers with colorblindness and/or is not true to the data, i.e. not perceptually uniform.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/276683v3 on bioRxiv
  4. Version published to 10.1101/276683v2 on bioRxiv
  5. Version published to 10.1101/276683v1 on bioRxiv