# Identifying the neural structures and dynamics that regulate phonological structure

> **NIH NIH R01** · MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL · 2021 · $427,761

## Abstract

The systematic patterning of language is a fundamental property of cognition. One aspect of this patterning,
constraints on the combination of speech sounds to form words (phonotactic structure), has been implicated in
constraining diverse processes related to language acquisition, perception, and production, bilingual language
use, memory and even influences non-linguistic processes including the memorability of novel words and
consumer reaction to novel brand names. This patterning changes in a variety of common acquired and
developmental communication disorders. We will explore two explanations for these effects. One, developed in
linguistic theory, argues that language users discover a set of abstract, language-specific rules or constraints
that shape language use. The other view, developed in connectionist and dynamic systems theory, argues that
phonotactic constraints emerge from top-down lexical influences on speech perception. Discriminating
between these approaches is difficult because both explain behavioral data well. It is essential to discriminate
between these accounts for two reasons. This question offers an excellent opportunity to resolve the debate
over whether abstract linguistic rules/constraints create or simply describe the patterning of language. The
resolution of this question has fundamental implications for the way linguistic formalism and connectionist
simulations relate to human processing. At a more immediate level, this research offers the opportunity to
identify a common core mechanism (either the leveraged use of abstract linguistic rules or top-down lexical
influences) that explains and unites diverse linguistic and cognitive phenomena. Past efforts to resolve these
issues have failed because of fundamental inferential limitations of behavioral and BOLD imaging paradigms.
Accordingly, we have developed new tools and research strategies that allow us to identify patterns of directed
interaction between brain regions (effective connectivity), and use these analyses to draw much stronger
inferences about the dynamic processes that shape cognition. Observers in the field have argued that our
methods have already provided “definitive” evidence to resolve the decades old debate over the role of top-
down processes in speech processing. This proposal would extend those methods, and introduce innovative
neural decoding analyses that we will use to characterize the categories (e.g. rules, words, abstract
phonological representations needed to support rule application) that are encoded in localized brain activity.
Using these methods, we will determine whether top-down lexical processes that we have shown produce
phonotactic phenomena related to the processing of patterns that occur in speaker's language generalize to
unfamiliar patterns. We will also use them to identify the substrates of rule- versus word-mediated processing,
to provide a baseline for interpreted the representations and dynamic processes that support phon...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10146334
- **Project number:** 5R01DC015455-05
- **Recipient organization:** MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL
- **Principal Investigator:** SEPPO PENTTI AHLFORS
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $427,761
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2017-04-01 → 2024-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10146334

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10146334, Identifying the neural structures and dynamics that regulate phonological structure (5R01DC015455-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10146334. Licensed CC0.

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