Coupling between frontal gamma and posterior alpha oscillations support language prediction

Predictions during language perception might serve to support the integration of incoming words into sentence context and thus rely on interactions between areas in the language network. We have conducted MEG studies in which participants read sentences that varied in contextual constraints thus manipulating the predictability of the sentence-final words. Just prior to the sentence-final words, we observed stronger alpha power suppression for the highly predictable words in left inferior frontal cortex, left posterior temporal region, and visual word form area (VWFA). Importantly, the temporal and VWFA alpha power correlated negatively with left frontal gamma power for the highly constraining sentences. We suggest that these findings reflect the initiation of an anticipatory unification process in the language network.