Brain Processes of Relating a Statement to a Previously Read Text: Memory Resonance and Situational Constructions

One of the most fundamental characteristics of texts consists in the coherence among its sentences. We investigated by fMRI where in the brain such coherence relations are established and the relative duration of these processes by a behavioral experiment. In four experimental conditions, the coherence between a sentence and a subsequent test statement ranged from an explicit and a paraphrastic to an implicit and the lack of a precise relation (control condition). The participants had to decide whether the test statement was true with respect to the previously read sentence. For this decision the blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) response differentially indicated five brain regions (posterior cingulate, STG, left and right IFG, frontal medial gyrus). These results could consistently be interpreted to distinguish two interacting but separate brain processes involved in coherence formation. One of these processes may be termed memory resonance and the other one situational constructions.