A syntactic specialization for Broca's area

Despite numerous aphasia and functional imaging studies, the exact correlat ion between cortical language areas and subcomponents of the linguistic sys tem has not been established. Here, we used functional MRI to identify cort ical areas specifically involved in syntactic processing. An experimental d esign contrasted sentences containing grammatical errors with sentences con taining spelling errors, The ungrammatical sentences produced more activati on in cortical language areas than did the sentences with spelling errors, and the difference in activation was significantly greater in Broca's area than in Wernicke's area or in the angular gyrus/supramarginal gyrus, The pr esent findings provide direct evidence of a syntactic specialization for Br oca's area and establish the existence of distinct modules for our knowledg e of language.