Cognitive Neuroscience Sector, International School for Advanced Studies SISSA-ISAS, Trieste, Italy.
Neuropsychologia. 2010 May;48(6):1583-97. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2010.02.002. Epub 2010 Feb 9.
Whether semantic knowledge is categorically organized or is based in an undifferentiated distributed network within the temporal lobes or it is at least partially organized in property-based networks is still an open issue. With a naming task involving living and nonliving entities, the latter divided according to degree of manipulability, we studied a group of 30 tumour patients with either right, left anterior or left posterior temporal lobes' lesions and a herpes simplex encephalitis patient (MU). Both cross-subject and cross-stimulus analyses were conducted. Left hemisphere patients were overall worse than both right hemisphere patients and controls in the naming task. They moreover named nonliving items worse than living. This effect was larger in left posterior temporal than both right temporal and also left anterior temporal patients and significant both at a cross-subject and cross-stimulus levels of analysis. In addition the left posterior temporal group had more difficulties with highly manipulable objects than left anterior temporal patients, but the effect was significant only on a cross-subject analysis. VLSM lesion analysis revealed that the area most critically associated with the larger naming deficit for manipulable objects was the posterior superior portion of the left temporal lobe, particularly the posterior middle temporal gyrus. These results support a 'property-based networks' account of semantic knowledge rather than an 'undifferentiated network' account. For manipulable objects, this would be a posterior-temporal/inferior-parietal left hemisphere "action/manipulation-property-based" network related to the dorsal pathways which is thought to be important in action control, as suggested by neuroimaging results.
语义知识是分类组织的，还是基于颞叶内未分化的分布式网络，或者至少部分基于基于属性的网络，这仍然是一个悬而未决的问题。在一个涉及有生命和无生命实体的命名任务中，后者根据可操作性程度进行了划分，我们研究了一组 30 名肿瘤患者，他们的颞叶病变位于右侧、左侧前颞叶或左侧后颞叶，以及一名单纯疱疹性脑炎患者（MU）。进行了跨被试和跨刺激分析。在命名任务中，左半球患者的表现总体上不如右半球患者和对照组。他们对无生命的物品的命名也不如有生命的物品。这种影响在左侧后颞叶比右侧颞叶和左侧前颞叶患者更大，并且在跨被试和跨刺激分析水平上都是显著的。此外，左侧后颞叶组对高度可操作性的物体比左侧前颞叶患者更难，但是这种影响仅在跨被试分析中显著。VLSM 病变分析显示，与可操作性物体更大命名缺陷最相关的区域是左侧颞叶的后上部分，特别是后中颞叶。这些结果支持语义知识的“基于属性的网络”而不是“未分化网络”的解释。对于可操作性物体，这将是一个与背侧通路相关的左侧半球“动作/操作-基于属性的”网络，与动作控制有关，这是神经影像学结果所暗示的。
