The role of ventromedial prefrontal cortex in text comprehension inferences: Semantic coherence or socio-emotional perspective?

• Published in: Brain and language 2014-02, Vol.129, p.58-64
• Main Authors: Burin, Debora I., Acion, Laura, Kurczek, Jake, Duff, Melissa C., Tranel, Daniel, Jorge, Ricardo E.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adult and adolescent clinical studies; Aged; Biological and medical sciences; Comprehension; Emotional inferences; Emotions; Female; Humans; Language; Male; Medical sciences; Middle Aged; Narrative comprehension; Organic mental disorders. Neuropsychology; Prefrontal Cortex - physiopathology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Reading; Semantics; Social Environment; Social Perception; Spatial inferences; Text coherence; Text inferences; Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex
• ISSN: 0093-934X; 1090-2155
• DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2013.12.003

•Studied inferences in spatial or emotional narratives with the consistency paradigm.•vmPFC lesioned patients drew inferences in spatial stories, not in emotional ones.•Healthy comparison participants drew inferences both for spatial and emotional stories.•vmPFC might support inferences about socio-emotional aspects of narratives.•vmPFC might not be necessary for general semantic coherence processing. Two hypotheses about the role of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) in narrative comprehension inferences, global semantic coherence versus socio-emotional perspective, were tested. Seven patients with vmPFC lesions and seven demographically matched healthy comparison participants read short narratives. Using the consistency paradigm, narratives required participants to make either an emotional or visuo-spatial inference, in which a target sentence provided consistent or inconsistent information with a previous emotional state of a character or a visuo-spatial location of an object. Healthy comparison participants made the inferences both for spatial and emotional stories, as shown by longer reading times for inconsistent critical sentences. For patients with vmPFC lesions, inconsistent sentences were read slower in the spatial stories, but not in the emotional ones. This pattern of results is compatible with the hypothesis that vmPFC contributes to narrative comprehension by supporting inferences about socio-emotional aspects of verbally described situations.