Chou Tai-Li, Chen Chih-Wei, Wu Mei-Yao, Booth James R
Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei, 106, Taiwan.
Exp Brain Res. 2009 Oct;198(4):465-75. doi: 10.1007/s00221-009-1942-y. Epub 2009 Jul 18.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to explore the neural correlates of semantic judgments to Chinese characters. Adult participants were asked to indicate if character pairs were related in meaning that were arranged in a continuous variable according to association strength. This parametric manipulation allowed for a more precise determination of the role of the left inferior parietal lobule in processing meaning, which has not been reported in previous Chinese studies. Consistent with previous findings in English, participants showed activation in left inferior frontal gyrus (BA 47, 45) and left posterior middle temporal gyrus (BA 21). Characters with stronger semantic association elicited greater activation in left inferior parietal lobule (BA 39), suggesting stronger integration of highly related semantic features. By contrast, characters with weaker semantic association elicited greater activation in both an anterior ventral region (BA 47) and a mid-ventral region of left inferior frontal gyrus (BA 45), suggesting a controlled retrieval process and a selection process. Our findings of association strength are discussed in a proposed neuro-anatomical model of semantic processing.
功能磁共振成像被用于探究对汉字语义判断的神经关联。成年参与者被要求指出根据关联强度以连续变量形式排列的汉字对在意义上是否相关。这种参数化操作使得能够更精确地确定左下顶叶小叶在处理意义中的作用，这在之前的中文研究中尚未有报道。与之前英文研究的结果一致，参与者在左下额回（BA 47、45）和左后颞中回（BA 21）表现出激活。语义关联较强的汉字在左下顶叶小叶（BA 39）引发更大激活，表明高度相关语义特征的更强整合。相比之下，语义关联较弱的汉字在左额下回的前腹侧区域（BA 47）和中腹侧区域（BA 45）均引发更大激活，表明存在一个受控检索过程和一个选择过程。我们关于关联强度的研究结果在一个提出的语义处理神经解剖模型中进行了讨论。
