Previous research regarding the neural basis of semantic composition has relied heavily on violation paradigms, which often compare implausible sentences that violate world knowledge to plausible sentences that do not violate world knowledge. This comparison is problematic as it may involve extralinguistic operations such as contextual repair and processes that ultimately lead to the rejection of an anomalous sentence, and these processes may not be part of the core language system. Also, it is unclear if violations of world knowledge actually affect the linguistic operations for semantic composition. Here, we compared two types of sentences that were grammatical, plausible, and acceptable and differed only in the number of semantic operations required for comprehension without the confound of implausible sentences. Specifically, we compared complement coercion sentences ( the novelist began the book ), which require an extra compositional operation to arrive at their meaning, to control sentences ( the novelist wrote the book ), which do not have this extra compositional operation, and found that the neural response to complement coercion sentences activated Brodmann's area 45 in the left inferior frontal gyrus more than control sentences. Furthermore, the processing of complement coercion recruited different brain regions than more traditional semantic and syntactic violations ( the novelist astonished/write the book , respectively), suggesting that coercion processes are a part of the core of the language faculty but do not recruit the wider network of brain regions underlying semantic and syntactic violations.

The urgent need to recognize danger quickly has been shown to rely on preferential processing in dedicated neural circuitry. In previous behavioral studies examining the pattern of the face when displaying anger, we found evidence that simple noncontextual geometric shapes containing downward-pointing V-shaped angles activate the perception of threat. We here report that the neural circuitry known to be mobilized by many realistic, contextual threatening displays is also triggered by the simplest form of this V-shaped movement pattern, a downward-pointing triangle. Specifically, we show that simple geometric forms containing only downward-pointing V-shapes elicit greater activation of the amygdala, subgenual anterior cingulate cortex, superior temporal gyrus, and fusiform gyrus, as well as extrastriate visual regions, than do presentations of the identical V-shape pointing upward. Thus, this simple V-shape is capable of activating neural networks instantiating detection of threat and negative affect, suggesting that recognition of potential danger may be based, in part, on very simple, context-free visual cues.

Social stimuli function as emotional barometers for the immediate environment are the catalysts for many emotional reactions, and have inherent value for relationships and survival independent of their current emotional content. We, therefore, propose that the neural mechanisms underlying social and emotional information processing may be interconnected. In the current study, we examined the independent and interactive effects of social and emotional processes on brain activation. Whole-brain images were acquired while participants viewed and categorized affective pictures that varied on two dimensions: emotional content (i.e., neutral, emotional) and social content (i.e., faces/people, objects/scenes). Patterns of activation were consistent with past findings demonstrating that the amygdala and part of the visual cortex were more active to emotionally evocative pictures than to neutral pictures and that the superior temporal sulcus was more active to social than to nonsocial pictures. Furthermore, activation of the superior temporal sulcus and middle occipito-temporal cortex showed evidence of the interactive processing of emotional and social information, whereas activation of the amygdala showed evidence of additive effects. These results indicate that interactive effects occur early in the stream of processing, suggesting that social and emotional information garner greater attentional resources and that the conjunction of social and emotional cues results in synergistic early processing, whereas the amygdala appears to be primarily implicated in processing biologically or personally relevant stimuli, regardless of the nature of the relevance (i.e., social, emotional, or both).