The importance of semantic network brain regions in integrating prior knowledge with an ongoing dialogue

Abstract

To understand a dialogue we need to know the specific topics that are being discussed. This enables us to integrate our knowledge of what was said previously, in order to interpret the current dialogue. Here, we selectively manipulated knowledge about the narrative content of dialogues between two people, presented in short videos. The videos were clips taken from television situation comedies and the speech in the first-half of the clip could either be presented normally (high context) or spectrally rotated in order to render it unintelligible (low context). Knowledge of the preceding narrative boosted memory for the following dialogues as well as increased the inter-subject semantic similarity of recalled descriptions of the dialogues. Sharing knowledge of the preceding narrative across participants had two effects on fMRI markers of neural processing: (1) it strengthened temporal inter-subject correlations in regions including the left angular (AG) and inferior frontal gyri (IFG), and (2) it increased spatial inter-subject pattern similarity in the bilateral anterior temporal lobes (ATL). We argue that these brain regions, which are known to be involved in semantic processing, support the activation and integration of prior knowledge, which helps people to better understand and remember dialogues as they unfold.