Brain response to Information Structure misalignments in linguistic contexts

• Information processing is deeply influenced by expectation-driven strategies.
• In utterances, Given contents are expected to be realized as Topic and New contents as Focus.
• Evidence from brain rhythmic changes reveals increasing costs when these expectations are not met.
• New Topics and Given Foci elicit major synchronization effects in θ band.
• New Topics and Given Foci elicit major desynchronization effects in α and β bands.

The paper inquires, through the analysis of electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings, the processing costs associated to misalignments between the information status (Given/New) of discourse contents and their linguistic packaging as Topic or Focus in discourse. The way information is packaged within utterances, that is, their Information Structure, guides language comprehension. Sentences are typically organized into Topic and Focus units, commonly conveying Given (already active in working memory) and New (not active) information, respectively. Nonetheless, for precise purposes, novel information can be presented in Topic, and known information in Focus. The paper accounts for the efficiency of brain processing in response to such “violations” of Information Structure, through both EEG spectral analysis and whole-brain functional connectivity patterns. The main contribution of the present work is the analysis of brain responses in natural contexts, i.e. when processing whole texts of more sentences, instead of isolated (couples of) utterances as is the case of a number of experimental paradigms pursued in the psycholinguistic domain. EEG signals recorded from a population of 54 subjects highlight the presence of rhythmic changes in different frequency bands, depending on aligned and misaligned Information Structures.