The brain network mechanisms underlying the regulation of semantic conflicts in coherent relationships—evidence from fMRI studies on causal and subordinating relationships

Conjunctions are used to establish semantic relationships between speech units, thereby helping readers to construct coherent mental representations. The causal conjunction “because” and the concession conjunction “although” represent two fundamentally different types of discourse relationships. However, most studies have focused on the activation of individual brain regions or the connections between these two conjunctions, without systematically examining the differences between them at the level of overall brain networks. This study combines fMRI data, graph theory analysis, and multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) to examine how native Chinese speakers process semantic conflicts in different sentence structures. The study is conducted within a 2×2 design, with factors being the type of conjunction (causal vs. concession) and the level of semantic consistency (consistent vs. conflicting).