The thalamus is crucially embedded in language processing

Introduction: To understand a sentence, it is necessary to analyze its syntactic structure. In scalp EEG, correlates of such analysis can be depicted with event related potentials (ERP): the so called early left anterior negativity (ELAN), presumed to automatically detect phrase violations, and a later centro-parietal positivity (P600), putatively mirroring phrase structure re-analysis or repair. At difference to cortical processing, the specific involvement of subcortical language comprehension is controversial. Therefore, we aimed at recording syntactic error potentials directly from the thalamus in patients w…