Hashimoto Teruo, Usui Nobuo, Taira Masato, Nose Izuru, Haji Tomoki, Kojima Shozo
Department of Psychology, Faculty of Letters, Keio University, 2-15-45 Mita, Tokyo 108-8345, Japan.
Neuroimage. 2006 Jul 15;31(4):1762-70. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2006.02.019. Epub 2006 Apr 17.
This event-related fMRI study was conducted to examine the blood-oxygen-level-dependent responses to the processing of auditory onomatopoeic sounds. We used a sound categorization task in which the participants heard four types of stimuli: onomatopoeic sounds, nouns (verbal), animal (nonverbal) sounds, and pure tone/noise (control). By discriminating between the categories of target sounds (birds/nonbirds), the nouns resulted in activations in the left anterior superior temporal gyrus (STG), whereas the animal sounds resulted in activations in the bilateral superior temporal sulcus (STS) and the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). In contrast, the onomatopoeias activated extensive brain regions, including the left anterior STG, the region from the bilateral STS to the middle temporal gyrus, and the bilateral IFG. The onomatopoeic sounds showed greater activation in the right middle STS than did the nouns and environmental sounds. These results indicate that onomatopoeic sounds are processed by extensive brain regions involved in the processing of both verbal and nonverbal sounds. Thus, we can posit that onomatopoeic sounds can serve as a bridge between nouns and animal sounds. This is the first evidence to demonstrate the way in which onomatopoeic sounds are processed in the human brain.
这项与事件相关的功能磁共振成像研究旨在检查对听觉拟声词处理的血氧水平依赖反应。我们使用了一种声音分类任务，参与者在其中听到四种类型的刺激：拟声词、名词（语言类）、动物（非语言类）声音和纯音/噪音（对照）。通过区分目标声音的类别（鸟类/非鸟类），名词在左前颞上回（STG）引发激活，而动物声音在双侧颞上沟（STS）和左额下回（IFG）引发激活。相比之下，拟声词激活了广泛的脑区，包括左前STG、从双侧STS到颞中回的区域以及双侧IFG。拟声词在右中STS的激活比名词和环境声音更强。这些结果表明，拟声词由参与语言和非语言声音处理的广泛脑区进行处理。因此，我们可以假定拟声词可以作为名词和动物声音之间的桥梁。这是首个证明拟声词在人脑中处理方式的证据。
