Department of Experimental Psychology and Ghent Institute for Functional and Metabolic Imaging, Ghent University, Gent, Belgium.
Hum Brain Mapp. 2011 Nov;32(11):1811-24. doi: 10.1002/hbm.21152. Epub 2010 Dec 7.
In everyday life, our actions are often guided by verbal instructions. Usually, we can implement such instructions immediately without trial and error learning. This raises the fundamental question how verbal instructions are transformed into efficient motor behavior. The aim of this study was to gain deeper insights into the implementation of verbal instructions both on a neural and a cognitive level. To this end, we devised an fMRI experiment in which participants were required to permanently implement new stimulus-response (S-R) mappings and object-color (O-C) mappings. This enabled us to test whether there are brain areas that are specific to the implementation of newly instructed S-R mappings or whether newly instructed rules are represented independently from the specific content. Furthermore, we could test which brain areas are involved in the processing of S-R mappings when compared with O-C mappings. Our results suggest that only one brain area, the left inferior frontal junction (IFJ), was sensitive to the novelty of instructions regardless of whether these instructions conveyed S-R or O-C mappings. Furthermore, our results show that instructions conveying S-R mapping involve a network of brain areas, including pre-PMd, M1, and IPS that was not sensitive to the novelty of the instructions. Therefore, we conclude that the implementation of verbal instructions results from an interplay of a brain areas that represent novel rulelike information in domain general terms and brain areas that are specific to S-R rules.
在日常生活中，我们的行为通常是由口头指令指导的。通常，我们可以立即执行这些指令，而无需进行试错学习。这就提出了一个基本问题，即口头指令是如何转化为有效的运动行为的。本研究的目的是更深入地了解在神经和认知层面上执行口头指令的情况。为此，我们设计了一项 fMRI 实验，要求参与者永久执行新的刺激-反应（S-R）映射和物体-颜色（O-C）映射。这使我们能够测试是否存在专门用于执行新指令的 S-R 映射的大脑区域，或者新指令的规则是否独立于特定内容而表示。此外，我们可以测试在与 O-C 映射相比时，哪些大脑区域参与 S-R 映射的处理。我们的结果表明，只有一个大脑区域，即左侧下额联合区（IFJ），对指令的新颖性敏感，而不管这些指令传达的是 S-R 还是 O-C 映射。此外，我们的结果表明，传达 S-R 映射的指令涉及到一个大脑区域网络，包括前运动区（PMd）、M1 和 IPS，这些区域对指令的新颖性不敏感。因此，我们得出结论，口头指令的执行是由代表新颖规则信息的大脑区域与专门针对 S-R 规则的大脑区域相互作用的结果。
