Max-Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany.
Brain Lang. 2010 Jan;112(1):3-11. doi: 10.1016/j.bandl.2009.07.008. Epub 2009 Aug 20.
Broca's area is classically associated with speech production. Recently, Broca's area has also been implicated in speech perception and non-linguistic information processing. With respect to the latter function, Broca's area is considered to be a central area in a network constituting the human mirror system, which maps observed or heard actions onto motor programs to execute analogous actions. These mechanisms share some similarities with Liberman's motor theory, where objects of speech perception correspond to listener's intended articulatory gestures. The aim of the current series of behavioral, TMS and fMRI studies was to test if Broca's area is indeed implicated in such audio-motor transformations. More specifically, using a classical phonological rhyme priming paradigm, we investigated whether the role of Broca's area could be purely phonological or rather, is lexical in nature. In the behavioral baseline study, we found a large priming effect in word prime/target pairs (W-W) and no effect for pseudo-words (PW-PW). Online TMS interference of Broca's area canceled the priming difference between W-W and PW-PW by enhancing the effects for PW-PW. Finally, the fMRI study showed activation of Broca's area for W-W pairs, but not for PW-PW pairs. Our data show that Broca's area plays a significant role in speech perception strongly linked to the lexicality of a stimulus.
布罗卡区与言语产生密切相关。最近，布罗卡区也被牵连到言语感知和非语言信息处理中。关于后者的功能，布罗卡区被认为是构成人类镜像系统的网络中的一个核心区域，该系统将观察到或听到的动作映射到运动程序上，以执行类似的动作。这些机制与利伯曼的运动理论有一些相似之处，在该理论中，言语感知的对象对应于听众的预期发音手势。本系列行为、TMS 和 fMRI 研究的目的是测试布罗卡区是否确实参与了这种音频-运动转换。更具体地说，我们使用经典的语音押韵启动范式，研究了布罗卡区的作用是否纯粹是语音的，或者本质上是词汇的。在行为基线研究中，我们发现词对（W-W）之间存在很大的启动效应，而伪词对（PW-PW）之间没有效应。布罗卡区的在线 TMS 干扰通过增强 PW-PW 对的效应，取消了 W-W 和 PW-PW 之间的启动差异。最后，fMRI 研究显示 W-W 对激活了布罗卡区，但 PW-PW 对没有。我们的数据表明，布罗卡区在言语感知中起着重要作用，与刺激的词汇性密切相关。
