IRCCS E. Medea, San Vito al Tagliamento, Pordenone, Italy.
J Cogn Neurosci. 2012 Mar;24(3):736-48. doi: 10.1162/jocn_a_00168. Epub 2011 Nov 18.
The role that human motor areas play in linguistic processing is the subject of a stimulating debate. Data from nine neurosurgical patients with selective lesions of the precentral and postcentral sulcus could provide a direct answer as to whether motor area activation is necessary for action word processing. Action-related verbs (face-, hand-, and feet-related verbs plus neutral verbs) silently read were processed for (i) motor imagery by vividness ratings and (ii) frequency ratings. Although no stimulus- or task-dependent modulation was found in the RTs of healthy controls, patients showed a task × stimulus interaction resulting in a stimulus-dependent somatotopic pattern of RTs for the imagery task. A lesion affecting a part of the cortex that represents a body part also led to slower RTs during the creation of mental images for verbs describing actions involving that same body part. By contrast, no category-related differences were seen in the frequency judgment task. This task-related dissociation suggests that the sensorimotor area is critically involved in processing action verbs only when subjects are simulating the corresponding movement. These findings have important implications for the ongoing discussion regarding the involvement of the sensorimotor cortex in linguistic processing.
人类运动区在语言处理中所起的作用是一个引人入胜的争论主题。九位接受选择性中央前回和中央后回区域神经外科手术的患者的数据可以直接回答运动区的激活是否是动作词处理所必需的。对相关动作动词（面部、手部和脚部相关动词以及中性动词）进行默读，通过生动度评分和频率评分来进行（i）运动想象。尽管在健康对照组的反应时（RT）中没有发现刺激或任务相关的调制，但患者表现出任务×刺激的相互作用，导致在想象任务中 RT 呈现出刺激依赖的躯体定位模式。影响代表身体部位的皮层部分的损伤也导致在创建描述涉及同一身体部位的动作的动词的心理意象时反应时变慢。相比之下，在频率判断任务中没有看到类别相关的差异。这种与任务相关的分离表明，只有当受试者模拟相应的运动时，感觉运动区才会在处理动作动词中发挥关键作用。这些发现对正在进行的关于感觉运动皮层在语言处理中的参与的讨论具有重要意义。
