Processing linguistic complexity and grammaticality in the left frontal cortex

We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to directly compare the hemodynamic responses associated with varying degrees of linguistic complexity with those engendered by the processing of ungrammatical utterances. We demonstrate a dissociation within the left inferior frontal cortex between the deep frontal operculum, which responds to syntactic violations, and a core region of Broca's area, that is, the inferior portion of the left pars opercularis in Brodmann area 44, the activation of which is modulated as a function of the complexity of well-formed sentences. The data demonstrate that different brain regions in the prefrontal cortex support distinct mechanisms in the mapping from a linguistic form onto meaning, thereby separating ungrammaticality from linguistic complexity.