Allen John S, Emmorey Karen, Bruss Joel, Damasio Hanna
Dornsife Cognitive Neuroscience Imaging Center, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089-2520, USA.
J Neurosci. 2008 Nov 12;28(46):11900-5. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3141-08.2008.
We investigated whether auditory deprivation and/or sign language exposure during development alters the macroscopic neuroanatomy of the human insula. Volumetric analyses were based on MRI data from 25 congenitally deaf subjects who were native users of American Sign Language (ASL), 25 hearing subjects with no knowledge of ASL, and 16 hearing subjects who grew up in deaf families and were native ASL signers. Significant variation in insula volume was associated with both hearing status and sign language experience. Compared with both hearing groups, deaf subjects exhibited a significant increase in the amount of gray matter in the left posterior insular lobule, which we hypothesize may be related to the dependence on lip-reading and articulatory-based (rather than auditory-based) representations of speech for deaf individuals. Both deaf and hearing signers exhibited an increased volume of white matter in the right insula compared with hearing nonsigners. We hypothesize that the distinct morphology of the right insula for ASL signers may arise from enhanced connectivity resulting from an increased reliance on cross-modal sensory integration in sign language compared with spoken language.
我们研究了发育过程中的听觉剥夺和/或手语接触是否会改变人类脑岛的宏观神经解剖结构。容积分析基于来自25名先天性失聪受试者（他们是美国手语（ASL）的母语使用者）、25名不了解ASL的听力正常受试者以及16名在聋人家庭中长大且是ASL母语使用者的听力正常受试者的MRI数据。脑岛体积的显著差异与听力状况和手语经验均有关联。与两个听力组相比，失聪受试者左后脑岛小叶的灰质数量显著增加，我们推测这可能与失聪个体对唇读以及基于发音（而非基于听觉）的语音表征的依赖有关。与听力正常的非手语使用者相比，失聪和听力正常的手语使用者右侧脑岛的白质体积均有所增加。我们推测，与口语相比，手语使用者右侧脑岛独特的形态可能源于对跨模态感觉统合的依赖增加导致的连接增强。
