Language Evolution and Computation Research Unit, Linguistics and English Language, School of Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Dugald Stewart Building, 3 Charles Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AD, UK.
Cerebellum. 2011 Sep;10(3):540-50. doi: 10.1007/s12311-011-0269-y.
Recent research in cerebellar cognitive and linguistic functions makes plausible the idea that the cerebellum is involved in processing temporally contiguous linguistic input. In order to assess this hypothesis, a simple lexical decision task was constructed to study whether the effect of transcranial magnetic stimulation on two different cerebellar sites would have a selective impact on associative as opposed to semantic priming. This is the first experiment applying transcranial magnetic stimulation of the cerebellum to a linguistic task. The results show a selective drop in lexical decision accuracy after stimulation of a medial cerebellar site in the first session of participation. Most importantly, they also demonstrate a selective increase of associative priming sizes after stimulation of the same site that cannot be attributed to changes in sensorimotor performance or in accuracy rates. The finding is discussed within the context of domain-general associative cerebellar computations.
最近关于小脑认知和语言功能的研究表明，小脑可能参与处理时间连续的语言输入。为了评估这一假设，构建了一个简单的词汇判断任务，以研究经颅磁刺激对两个不同小脑部位的影响是否会对联想而非语义启动产生选择性影响。这是第一次将小脑经颅磁刺激应用于语言任务的实验。结果表明，在第一次参与时刺激小脑的一个内侧部位后，词汇判断的准确性会选择性下降。最重要的是，他们还证明了在同一部位刺激后联想启动的大小会选择性增加，这不能归因于感觉运动性能或准确率的变化。这一发现是在联想小脑计算的一般领域的背景下进行讨论的。
