Sentential Negation Might Share Neurophysiological Mechanisms with Action Inhibition. Evidence from Frontal Theta Rhythm.

Previous studies have shown that linguistic negation reduces the accessibility of the negated concepts and suppresses the activation of specific brain regions that operate in affirmative statements. Although these studies focus on the consequences of negation on cognitive and neural processes, the proper neural mechanisms of negation have not yet been explored. In the present EEG study, we tested the hypothesis that negation uses the neural network of action inhibition. Using a Go/NoGo task embedded in a sentence comprehension task, we found that negation in the context of NoGo trials modulates frontal theta rhythm, which is usually considered a signature of action inhibition and control mechanisms.