Ben-Shachar Michal, Hendler Talma, Kahn Itamar, Ben-Bashat Dafna, Grodzinsky Yosef
Department of Psychology, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Psychol Sci. 2003 Sep;14(5):433-40. doi: 10.1111/1467-9280.01459.
The functional anatomy of syntactic transformations, a major computational operation invoked in sentence processing, was identified through a functional magnetic resonance imaging investigation. A grammaticality judgment task was used, presented through a novel hidden-blocks design. Subjects listened to transformational and nontransformational sentences in which a host of other complexity generators (number of words, prepositions, embeddings, etc.) were kept constant. A series of analyses revealed that the neural processing of transformations is localizable, evoking a highly lateralized and localized activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus (Broca's region) and bilateral activation in the posterior superior temporal sulcus. The pattern of activation associated with transformational analysis was distinct from the one observed in neighboring regions, and anatomically separable from the effects of verb complexity, which yielded significant activation in the left posterior superior temporal sulcus. Taken together with neuropsychological evidence, these results uncover the neural reality of syntactic transformations.
句法转换的功能解剖学是句子处理中调用的一种主要计算操作，通过功能磁共振成像研究得以确定。采用了一种语法判断任务，并通过新颖的隐藏块设计呈现。受试者听转换句和非转换句，其中一系列其他复杂性生成因素（单词数量、介词、嵌入等）保持不变。一系列分析表明，转换的神经处理是可定位的，在左下额回（布洛卡区）引发高度偏侧化和局部激活，并在后颞上沟产生双侧激活。与转换分析相关的激活模式与在相邻区域观察到的模式不同，并且在解剖学上与动词复杂性的影响可分离，动词复杂性在左后颞上沟产生显著激活。结合神经心理学证据，这些结果揭示了句法转换的神经现实。
