Bookheimer Susan
Brain Mapping Center, UCLA School of Medicine, 90095, USA.
Annu Rev Neurosci. 2002;25:151-88. doi: 10.1146/annurev.neuro.25.112701.142946. Epub 2002 Mar 19.
Until recently, our understanding of how language is organized in the brain depended on analysis of behavioral deficits in patients with fortuitously placed lesions. The availability of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) for in vivo analysis of the normal brain has revolutionized the study of language. This review discusses three lines of fMRI research into how the semantic system is organized in the adult brain. These are (a) the role of the left inferior frontal lobe in semantic processing and dissociations from other frontal lobe language functions, (b) the organization of categories of objects and concepts in the temporal lobe, and (c) the role of the right hemisphere in comprehending contextual and figurative meaning. Together, these lines of research broaden our understanding of how the brain stores, retrieves, and makes sense of semantic information, and they challenge some commonly held notions of functional modularity in the language system.
直到最近，我们对大脑中语言组织方式的理解还依赖于对偶然发生脑损伤患者行为缺陷的分析。功能磁共振成像（fMRI）可用于对正常大脑进行活体分析，这彻底改变了语言研究。这篇综述讨论了fMRI研究的三个方向，即成年大脑中语义系统是如何组织的。这些方向包括：（a）左下额叶在语义处理中的作用以及与其他额叶语言功能的分离；（b）颞叶中物体和概念类别的组织；（c）右半球在理解语境和比喻意义中的作用。这些研究方向共同拓宽了我们对大脑如何存储、检索和理解语义信息的认识，并且对语言系统中一些普遍持有的功能模块化观念提出了挑战。
