Temporal prediction assists language comprehension. In a series of recent behavioral studies, we have shown that listeners specifically employ rhythmic modulations of prosody to estimate the duration of upcoming sentences, thereby speeding up comprehension. In the current human magnetoencephalography (MEG) study on participants of either sex, we show that the human brain achieves this function through a mechanism termed entrainment. Through entrainment, electrophysiological brain activity maintains and continues contextual rhythms beyond their offset. Our experiment combined exposure to repetitive prosodic contours with the subsequent presentation of visual sentences that either matched or mismatched the duration of the preceding contour. During exposure to prosodic contours, we observed MEG coherence with the contours, which was source-localized to right-hemispheric auditory areas. During the processing of the visual targets, activity at the frequency of the preceding contour was still detectable in the MEG; yet sources shifted to the (left) frontal cortex, in line with a functional inheritance of the rhythmic acoustic context for prediction. Strikingly, when the target sentence was shorter than expected from the preceding contour, an omission response appeared in the evoked potential record. We conclude that prosodic entrainment is a functional mechanism of temporal prediction in language comprehension. In general, acoustic rhythms appear to endow language for employing the brain's electrophysiological mechanisms of temporal prediction.

时间预测有助于语言理解。在最近的一系列行为研究中，我们表明，听众会专门使用韵律的节奏调制来估计即将到来的句子的持续时间，从而加快理解速度。在当前针对任一性别参与者的人类脑磁图（MEG）研究中，我们表明人类大脑通过一种称为夹带的机制实现这一功能。通过夹带，电生理大脑活动维持并继续超越其偏移的上下文节律。我们的实验将重复的韵律轮廓与随后呈现的与先前轮廓的持续时间匹配或不匹配的视觉句子结合起来。在暴露于韵律轮廓期间，我们观察到 MEG 与轮廓的一致性，其源定位于右半球听觉区域。在处理视觉目标的过程中，在 MEG 中仍然可以检测到前一个轮廓频率的活动；然而，信号源转移到（左）额叶皮层，这与用于预测的节奏声学背景的功能继承一致。引人注目的是，当目标句子短于先前轮廓的预期时，诱发电位记录中会出现遗漏反应。我们得出的结论是，韵律夹带是语言理解中时间预测的功能机制。一般来说，声音节律似乎赋予语言利用大脑的时间预测的电生理机制。