Language comprehension entails more than simply decoding the literal meaning of an utterance:
our interpretation is powerfully shaped by our knowledge of the intent of the speaker, the
linguistic and social context, and our general world knowledge. This ability to exploit speaker
intent and background knowledge to go beyond the literal meaning of the sentence is referred to
as “pragmatics”, and is at the core of communicative success. Pragmatic deficits characterize
numerous developmental disorders, like autism spectrum disorders or Social Communication
Disorder, and commonly arise in individuals with acquired frontal lobe or right hemisphere
damage due to stroke, head injury, or degeneration. Given that successful communication is key
to our ability to form personal and professional relationships, it is critical to develop effective
diagnostics and treatments for individuals suffering from communication disorders. An
understanding of the neural and cognitive mechanisms that underlie pragmatic processing is an
essential prerequisite.
Using a powerful functional localization approach in fMRI and adhering to the current
standards of reproducible and transparent science, we here propose to systematically examine the
contributions of three communication-relevant networks – the language network, the social
cognition network, and the executive-function network – to pragmatic reasoning, and the
interactions among these networks through a synergistic combination of traditional task-based
paradigms (Aim 1), naturalistic cognition paradigms (Aims 2 and 3), and dynamic network
modeling (Aim 3). In Aim 1, we examine the responses in the language, social, and executive
networks to diverse pragmatic phenomena, like humor, metaphor, and white lies. In Aim 2, we
examine stimulus-related activity in each of our target networks during the processing of rich
naturalistic linguistic materials. And in Aim 3, we use dynamic network modeling to examine the
interactions between networks during linguistic processing. This work will profoundly impact
both i) basic science, by providing a rich characterization of the relative importance of the key
networks, the division of labor among them, and the nature of their interactions, and ii) clinical
practice, by providing a solid theoretical framework and a robust empirical foundation for
understanding disorders of communication. In summary, this research will shed new critical light
on the neural architecture of pragmatic reasoning and lay the foundation for future work aimed at
probing the nature of communicative failures in pragmatic disorders of diverse etiologies.